Der Schatten über Innsmouth (9783990850855)

Geschrieben von Howard Phillips Lovecraft und Sebastian Jackel

Erzählt von Thomas Jahn

Schatten über Innsmouth (Originaltitel „The Shadow over Innsmouth“) ist eine Erzählung des US-amerikanischen Schriftstellers Howard Phillips Lovecraft aus dem Bereich der Horrorliteratur. Sie wurde 1931 fertiggestellt und 1936 zum ersten Mal veröffentlicht.
Die Erzählung beschreibt aus der Sicht eines jungen Mannes, wie dieser in der verfallenden, „vom Grauen überschatteten“ fiktiven Hafenstadt Innsmouth auf eine seltsame Hybridrasse – halb Mensch, halb Fisch-Frosch – stößt. Diese Stadtbewohner gehören dem Esoterischen Orden von Dagon an, der die gleichnamige Philister-Gottheit Dagon aus dem Cthulhu-Mythos anbetet. Gejagt von den Bewohnern gelingt es dem Erzähler, aus der Stadt zu fliehen, nur um schließlich ein noch grauenhafteres Geheimnis zu enthüllen.
Heute gilt Schatten über Innsmouth als Lovecrafts größte Erzählung über Degeneration und den Niedergang einer Gemeinde, dargestellt durch Rassenvermischung der Einwohner mit den Tiefen Wesen. Das Thema des Rassismus ist in diesem Werk allgegenwärtig.

• Sprache: Deutsch
• Herausgeber: JM Audiobooks
• Erscheinungsdatum: 10. Dez. 2018
• ISBN: 9783990850855

Howard Phillips Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was an American author of science fiction and horror stories. Born in Providence, Rhode Island to a wealthy family, he suffered the loss of his father at a young age. Raised with his mother’s family, he was doted upon throughout his youth and found a paternal figure in his grandfather Whipple, who encouraged his literary interests. He began writing stories and poems inspired by the classics and by Whipple’s spirited retellings of Gothic tales of terror. In 1902, he began publishing a periodical on astronomy, a source of intellectual fascination for the young Lovecraft. Over the next several years, he would suffer from a series of illnesses that made it nearly impossible to attend school. Exacerbated by the decline of his family’s financial stability, this decade would prove formative to Lovecraft’s worldview and writing style, both of which depict humanity as cosmologically insignificant. Supported by his mother Susie in his attempts to study organic chemistry, Lovecraft eventually devoted himself to writing poems and stories for such pulp and weird-fiction magazines as Argosy, where he gained a cult following of readers. Early stories of note include “The Alchemist” (1916), “The Tomb” (1917), and “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” (1919). “The Call of Cthulu,” originally published in pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928, is considered by many scholars and fellow writers to be his finest, most complex work of fiction. Inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and Lord Dunsany, Lovecraft became one of the century’s leading horror writers whose influence remains essential to the genre.