Fantomy – Švanda Karel (2025)

Ghosts, corpses, fateful women, spirits with heads and without, the shadow of E. T. A. Hoffmann, the dark side of theater...

To all literary adventurers and lovers of dark curiosities, we offer another macabre delicacy, this time a collection of short stories by Karel Švanda ze Semčic (1867-1928), a native of Vršovice and a member of a famous theatrical family. Inspired by Poe and Hoffmann, Švanda tells colorful and imaginative ghost stories from various settings. The reader is taken on a trip to France, Germany, Vienna, and the streets of Prague, to a cemetery, a psychiatric hospital, theaters, salons, and inns.

In the 19th century, very few authors dedicated an entire collection of short stories to ghostly tales, let alone two. Švanda published the volumes Fantastic Stories (1892) and Bizarre Stories (1897), and the best of them forms the basis of this selection. As a bonus, we present an excerpt from Švanda's successful translation of Hoffmann's fairy tale novella The Golden Pot, and everything is crowned, as is customary, with an insightful and extensive afterword by Petr Boček, who compiled the book.