Averoigne

A newly collected standalone edition of Clark Ashton Smith’s ＂Averoigne＂ stories, full of evocative historical ambience and dark fantasy.

Finally collected in a signature single standalone edition, Clark Ashton Smith’s Averoigne is a testament of temptation and transcendence: corrupt sellswords, vengeful sorceresses, and time-warping dissident priests all play a part in these tales set in the louche groves of Smith’s decadent imagination. Printed in the style of the erstwhile Ballantine Books Adult Fantasy Series, Averoigne concludes the iconic five-book cycle begun by editor Lin Carter in 1970 and left unfinished until now.

Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) was an American writer, poet, and artist, best known for his contributions to weird fiction, fantasy, and horror literature. He gained early recognition for his poetry, which caught the attention of George Sterling, Ambrose Bierce, and Jack London. Smith’s most prolific period as a fiction writer was during the 1930s, when he published numerous short stories in Weird Tales magazine alongside contemporaries like H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. Beyond writing, Smith was also an accomplished sculptor and painter. Despite periods of relative obscurity during his lifetime, Smith’s influence on the genres of weird fiction and fantasy has been significant, with his work experiencing a resurgence of interest in recent decades.

Kit Schluter was born in Boston in 1989. He has translated numerous books from the Spanish and French, including Marcel Schwob’s Book of Monelle and Rafael Bernal’s His Name Was Death, and is author of Cartoons, a collection of absurdist short stories and drawings, and Pierrot’s Fingernails, a book of poems. He lives in Mexico City.