The King in Yellow

About the book

The opening stories of this collection circle a forbidden play whose words and imagery disturb the people who encounter it. Chambers uses uncertain narrators, artistic settings, and recurring suggestions of another world to make the relation between imagination and experience difficult to secure. The volume then changes its range, including other supernatural material, brief prose pieces, and stories of artists and romantic attachments. It should be read as a varied collection rather than a single continuous account of the sinister title figure. That variety lets the reader notice both the force of the early stories' shared atmosphere and the author's broader interest in desire, art, and unstable expectations. The most unsettling moments make cultural objects seem capable of altering the lives that ordinarily contain them.

• Art and influence
• Uncertainty
• Desire

Why read it

For the concentrated atmosphere of its opening tales and the unexpected changes of mood across the whole volume.

Story collection · English text