My ideal book, and… it’s in Italian and I can’t read Italian. Urg. Tolkien e Lovecraft: Alle origini del fantastico is newly published in the Historica Edizioni series.

J.R..R. Tolkien and H.P. Lovecraft: the gods of fantastic writing, co-founders of a genre that is both deeply ancestral and very modern. The conventional view would place them at opposite ends of the fantastic ecosystem: light and shadow, black and white, Tolkien synonymous with airy fantasy and Lovecraft with deep horror. Yet in the epic of Tolkien’s Middle-earth there is no shortage of flashes of darkness and terror, just as in the dark Lovecraftian cosmos, populated by unspeakable entities, fairy-tale horizons of enchantment and wonder are also found. By analysing their masterpieces, and the reading that inspired both men, this book aims to read the two great architects of the imagination from a more flexible perspective, one which attempts to frame and understand them within their authentic complexity.

Soon to be available via Amazon Italy, which has a 28th November 2023 publication date though the book is not currently listed as shipping. Amazon UK “knows ‘a nurthing” about the book.