The Truth of Carcosa - by Jacob Rollinson (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Evil books, shadowy corporations, and interdimensional monster collide in this dark, masterful tribute to Robert Chamber's cult classic, The King in Yellow.

In 1984, exiled author Salvatore Archimboldi accepts the help of a psychotherapist to write his new book. He hopes to transform his traumatic memories into literary genius. But the resulting book, The Truth of Carcosa, is pure evil. Horrified, Archimboldi suppresses the book and wills all traces of it, his correspondence, and any copies to be destroyed.

Long after Archimboldi's death, in a chaotic age of resurgent nationalism and violence, one of the only havens for his work is the ALI, the Archive for Literary Investment, where a biographer and his protégée search through Archimboldi's correspondence for clues on the evil manuscript as they attempt to stop unscrupulous firms with their own plans for the manuscript.

Told from the perspective of a madman obsessed with The Truth of Carcosa and a ragtag group of friends, it becomes clear that this book is more than a book--and that it might be the answer to a bewildering set of questions:

Why is the Archive so desperate to preserve Archimboldi's work?

Why do so many corporations seem hellbent on seizing any scrap of this mysterious manuscript--and at whatever cost?

What are the strange, dancing monsters that appear wherever Archimboldi's work is discovered?

And who--or what--is the Yellow King?

Review Quotes

"At once a cosmic horror and state-of-the-nation dystopia, a discourse on the power of language and a page-turner with the pace of a thriller--in Rollinson's The Truth of Carcosa we see nothing less than the arrival of a major voice."--Paul Cooper, historian, podcaster, and author of the acclaimed Fall of Civilizations: Stories and Greatness and Decline

"In Jacob Rollinson's ambitious debut, a dark and chthonic power seeks to bring about hell on earth--but haven't you noticed that hell is already here? The Truth of Carcosa is of its moment and eternal, suspenseful and inevitable, inhuman and deeply humane. Read it while the flames draw closer."--Dan Kois, author of Hampton Heights

"Rollinson may have cracked the code to discover how to find cosmic horror's future in its surreal history."--Tobias Carroll, author of In the Sight and Political Sign

About the Author

Jacob Rollinson was born in England in 1984 and has lived and worked in China and the UK. He completed a creative and critical writing PhD at the University of East Anglia, and his fiction and creative nonfiction has been published in NewWriting.net, Spoonfeed, Moxy, Critical Quarterly and the Brixton Review of Books. His novella Late King in Yellow Woods was published in 2021. He lives in Sussex and works as an academic librarian.