Boy in Darkness : And Other Stories

Mervyn Peake is best known for his monumental Titus novels set inside the sprawling, decaying castle of Gormenghast. The novella Boy in Darkness was conceived while the author was still writing the trilogy and features a fourteen-year-old boy who is unnamed, though undoubtedly Titus Groan, in a dream-like adventure that takes place beyond the confines of his oppressive and ritualistic birthplace. Here he wanders into a soulless landscape where he is captured by the sinister Goat and Hyena, grotesque henchmen of an evil master intent on claiming Titus's soul. A disturbing and atmospheric tale, Boy in Darkness bears comparison with the works of Kafka and Poe. The five other stories in this volume - long out of print - are written across a range of genres and settings and include a macabre ghost story and wry character studies drawn from the author's life in London and on the island of Sark in the Channel Islands, encapsulating surprisingly different facets of Peake's extraordinary imagination.

Mervyn Peake was the author of The Glassblowers, Gormenghast, The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb, Shapes and Sounds, Titus Alone, and Titus Groan. He was awarded the W. H. Heinemann Foundation Prize by the Royal Society of Literature in 1950.