Alessandro Manzetti's Blog, page 39

WAR - Dark Poems reviewed by Mike Thorn

Mike Thorn reviewed 'WAR - Dark Poems', my latest poetry collection, written in collaboration with multiple Bram Stoker Awards and Rhysling Awards winning poet Marge Simon, released today by Crystal Lake Publishing.

From the review:  "(…)This focus on the particular does not overshadow War’s considerable ambition: spanning time, place and point of view, this collection approaches its title topic from the terrifying angles of imperialism, post-traumatic stress disorder, misogyny, fear, racism and ignorance. Sometimes slipping into their speakers’ perspectives and sometimes writing with chilling omniscience, Manzetti and Simon offer no reprieves. This book delivers blunt-force impact to match its subject. Fitting for a contemporary world that feels more apocalyptic with every passing day, War demands attention and makes no compromises.(…)"

Read the review here

New Release: WAR -Dark Poems

Released today from Crystal Lake Publishing my new dark potery collection, written in collaboration with multiple Bram Stoker Awards and Rhysling Awards winning poet Marge Simon, WAR - Dark Poems.
Cover art by Wendy Saber Core, Internal illustrations by Stefano Cardoselli.
Buy your copy (paperback and digital) at Amazon.

Description: Look in my eyes. My bronze skin reflects the flames of the battles. I feed on bullets and shrapnel. I have trenches instead of veins and a bombardier’s whirring plays my favorite symphony inside my big head. This is my story, with some of my best camouflages and disguises, and you should expect your peace plans to fail. Because that's what I do for living. Look at my million golden teeth necklace. Ring any bells? Maybe you’re too young. I probably should have mentioned the fireworks over the Baghdad night sky, my new friend, or the live broadcast of two great skyscrapers disintegrating. You know what I'm talking about, right? So, you can call me by one of my many names: Great General, Lock-box of the Powerful, Red Rain, Lord of Steel or, more simply, WAR. I appear as strife of many kinds, from Stalingrad to Scotland. Africa to Afghanistan, the civil war of Italy and the War Between the States, ghostly wars, drug wars, the battle of the sexes, World Wars I, II and visions of a holocaust yet to come. It’s all herein and more, with poems both collaborative and individual.


from the Internal Illustrations by Stefano Cardoselli About WAR

"This powerful collection by two masterful poets has an equally strong title in three simple letters and Stefano Cardoselli's amazing interior art. The human need to dominant makes ghosts of the victims, survivors, and victors; all stuck in a perpetual march towards endless battles. No country or time, no one from unborn to elderly is spared; spanning conflicts from 1520 to the future, each graceful poem pulled deep at my heart."
--Linda D. Addison, award-winning author of 'How to Recognize a Demon Has Become Your Friend' and HWA Lifetime Achievement Award winner.

"Stoker-winning authors Alessandro Manzetti and Marge Simon teamed up to produce this searing volume of dark poetry written in the blood of history's battles. With an unflinching eye that merges the lyrical and the unspeakable, the poets lead the reader into the depravity and carnage of humankind's endless wars, from a Vietnamese prostitute seeking razor-studded revenge to an Iraqui girl running home with her mother's head under her arm. Not for the faint-hearted, WAR is both unforgettable and, at times, shockingly beautiful."
--Lucy Taylor award-winning author of 'The Safety of Unknown Cities'

"Absolutely Loved the collection! The poetry brought tears to my eyes, made me furious, made me sad, made me feel hopeful for our futures. A very emotionally-moving collaborative collection! Words begin wars; words end them. War is horror incarnate, the utter destruction of humanity. Marge Simon and Alessandro Manzetti, two of the most brilliant poets and fiction writers working today, have collaborated on a collection simply titled War (one of the shortest yet most powerful of words), exploring centuries of a battle-scarred and -scared world. War is history versed through poetry, a beautifully-horrific dissection of humanity."
--Michael Bailey, author of 'Palindrome Hannah', 'Phoenix Rose', and 'Psychotropic Dragon'
from the Internal Illustrations by Stefano Cardoselli Buy your copy (paperback and digital) at Amazon.

Annunciato il romanzo IL CUSTODE DI CHERNOBYL

NARAKA (English Edition) Photo Gallery

'NARAKA - The Ultimate Human Breeeding'
My first novel translated in English is available at Amazon.
Translation by Daniele Bonfanti; English Editing by Michael Bailey and Daniele Bonfanti. Front cover art by Wendy Saber Core, rear cover artwork and internal illustrations by Stefano Cardoselli.

Synopsis
Welcome to New Belmarsh Penitentiary, a space farm of human meat, where Slicers dispatch fleeing captives and organs are mechanically excised from the flesh and kept alive. Torture and death in a thousand variations await the dying and the damned. After the impact of radioactive, disease-bringing meteorite Uxor77 (presenting a new Year 0), a slow but unrelenting apocalypse is triggered. Earth is poisoned, agriculture compromised. In an already over-exploited environment, this leads to a global food crisis. Only the rich can afford what little vegetables and meat remain clean. Cannibalism is just around the corner.
In the year 41 post-Uxor, countries like New France are heavily militarized and entire districts out of control, such as South Paris 5, governed by the criminal boss Big Blue, an “artist” who collects sadistic human installations. The wealthy dine at illegal cannibalistic restaurants like Le Sphinx Tatoué, where they can have sadistic sex and unorthodox meals with “disposable” prostitutes, while mutated rats compete with human wretches on the streets for scraps of food.
New Moon Corporation is making a profit out of this mess, experimenting with new drugs and breeding humans to produce meat for the rich. To this end, NARAKA, aka New Belmarsh Penitentiary, is built on the Moon, a way to control the spreading criminality by removing from the planet the worst scum of Earth. This includes Kiki Léger, former South Paris 5 prostitute turned professional assassin. In Naraka, inmates are slaughtered, packaged, and delivered to Earth in cans, while a lunatic pedophile priest makes up a new heretic religion. Even worse things happen in the lower layers of the underground, hive-like structure …

Buy the book at Amazon (printed and digital edition)
Praise for NARAKA
"Alessandro Manzetti’s NARAKA is a dark, frightening and heartbreaking novel that takes an unflinching look at evil and courage. Highly recommended!”
--Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of GLIMPSE and V-WARS

“I am unable to think of a more original novel in any genre. Each paragraph is a delectable new treat in what you should think of as a diabolical Whitman’s Sampler from Hell. I’ve never taken LSD and now I don’t have to; after finishing NARAKA, its hideous, chimeral imagery raced ceaseless Tartarean circles in my brain, like a spew of appalling living things, and I was helpless to stop it. This book is a must-read for fans of any type of heavy-weight non-mainstream fiction, an unparalleled literary carpet-bombing that will warp your mind for some time to come.”
--Edward Lee, author of THE BIGHEAD and WHITE TRASH GOTHIC

"Alessandro Manzetti’s NARAKA is a wildly original tour de force, a feverish and fascinating nightmare of a novel that gets under your skin and nests there in an alarmingly unsettling way. Many works deal with the darker sides of existence and what it means to be alive, to be human, or something other than human—anything but human—but I have honestly never read anything that does it quite the way Manzetti does it in NARAKA. Raw and deeply disturbing, I can guarantee you NARAKA is unlike anything you’ve experienced before. Not to be missed”
–Greg F. Gifune, author of SAVAGE and A WINTER SLEEP

"Welcome to New Belmarsh, Naraka, a space farm of human meat where Slicers dispatch fleeing captives, organs are mechanically excised from the flesh and kept alive, and torture and death in a thousand variations await the dying and damned who reside here. A gut punch of a novel that brings to mind–and then exceeds–the hellscapes of Dante and Bosch, read NARAKA at your own risk: its images will infiltrate your being and take root in your mind. You cant unvisit Naraka or unsee its unholy delving into what author Alessandro Manzetti so aptly calls “the unaware bestiality of the human race.”
–Lucy Taylor, author of THE SAFETY OF UNKNOWN CITIES

"A stark, brutal vision of a future shrouded in darkness and steeped in blood. This is sharp-edged science fiction that claws deeper into your brain with every word you read."
--Tim Waggoner, author of THE MOUTH OF THE DARK

“Naraka” is a term in Hindu and Buddhist cosmology generally translated as “hell.” Naraka, the novel, is a brutal, vivid, hi-tech portrait of a future world where life is cheap, food is scarce, and cannibalism has become the order of the day. One of the major strengths of Naraka lies in its language, which whirlwinds forward with a kind manic intensity that sweeps the reader along with it. Manzetti is a gifted poet, and many of the prose passages here could stand alone as poetry. Highly recommended for literary aficionados of dark and explicit horror."
--Bruce Boston, SFPA Grandmaster, author of DARK ROADS

"This is a wild ride through a new kind of hell. Visceral. Reminiscent of Clive Barker. I don't know how else to describe it."
--Michael Bailey, Bram Stoker Award Winning Author

​Buy the book at Amazon (printed and digital edition)

Recensione di 'Eden Underground' (Ed. Italiana) su Horror World

Online su Horror World la recensione di Mario Spagnoletto dell'edizione Italiana della mia raccolta di poesie dark Eden Underground, opera vincitrice del Bram Stoker Award, pubblicata da Cut Up Publishing e illustrata da Giampaolo Frizzi.

​Dalla recensione: (...) “Eden Undeground” è un’opera particolare, pulsante e sanguinolenta. La poesia di Manzetti è sporca, cruda, viscida, ma elegante. Ogni parola trasuda marciume e squallore, evoca immagini malsane nella mente del lettore che si fanno ancor più nitide grazie ai bellissimi disegni in bianco e nero di Giampaolo Frizzi.  (...) L’autore ci prende per mano e ci trascina, in un viaggio che ha un che di Dantesco, verso un Eden marcio, avvizzito e decadente, popolato da puttane, bambole che prendono vita, macellai umani, berserker e orde di scarafaggi putrescenti. (...)

​Leggi la recensione completa su Horror World
​Acquista il libro su Amazon

Sacrificial Nights reviewed by Judy Comeau

Judy Comeau reviewed at The Tomb of Dark Delights blog 'Sacrificial Nights', my dark poetry novella written in collaboration with Bruce Boston (Kipple Officina Libraria, 2016):

Bram Stoker Award™ winning authors Bruce Boston and Alessandro Manzetti have marshaled together their formidable talents in creating this superb new novella of poetry and prose. Here they examine the urban nightscape: a living, pulsing, glittering, dangerous thing that draws us into its depths. What compels us? What makes us seek out the forbidden pleasures of the darkness in all their beauty and madness? Seething, edgy, and dangerous, herein you will find the subterranean alleyways filled with miasmic figures. The authors turn blazing fictive illumination upon denizens of the shadows: whores, pimps, monsters, killers, arsonists, ruined saviors, and all of the darker angels of our nightmares. The wicked and irredeemable traverse the bleak peripheries of humanity live and breathe in the beating pulse of exquisite poems and flashing tales from authors whose pens flash like scalpels, flaying open the night with skill and precision. Artist Ben Baldwin contributes ultra-noir illustrations that perfectly accompany these dark proceedings. Beautifully imagined and wrought, SACRIFICIAL NIGHTS is a dazzling and unsettling journey through the land of the lost.

Buy the book at Amazon

Released today my novel NARAKA - The Ultimate Human Breeding

Released today by Independent Legions Publishinf NARAKA - The Ultimate Human Breeding, my first novel translated into English. Translation by Daniele Bonfanti; English Editing by Michael Bailey and Daniele Bonfanti. Front cover art by Wendy Saber Core, rear cover artwork and internal illustrations by Stefano Cardoselli. Available at Amazon, printed and digital edition.
​Discover Naraka's Website

"Alessandro Manzetti’s NARAKA is a dark, frightening and heartbreaking novel that takes an unflinching look at evil and courage. Highly recommended!” --Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of GLIMPSE and V-WARS

“I am unable to think of a more original novel in any genre. Each paragraph is a delectable new treat in what you should think of as a diabolical Whitman’s Sampler from Hell. I’ve never taken LSD and now I don’t have to; after finishing NARAKA, its hideous, chimeral imagery raced ceaseless Tartarean circles in my brain, like a spew of appalling living things, and I was helpless to stop it. This book is a must-read for fans of any type of heavy-weight non-mainstream fiction, an unparalleled literary carpet-bombing that will warp your mind for some time to come.” --Edward Lee, author of THE BIGHEAD and WHITE TRASH GOTHIC
Synopsis: Welcome to New Belmarsh Penitentiary, a space farm of human meat, where Slicers dispatch fleeing captives and organs are mechanically excised from the flesh and kept alive. Torture and death in a thousand variations await the dying and the damned. After the impact of radioactive, disease-bringing meteorite Uxor77 (presenting a new Year 0), a slow but unrelenting apocalypse is triggered. Earth is poisoned, agriculture compromised. In an already over-exploited environment, this leads to a global food crisis. Only the rich can afford what little vegetables and meat remain clean. Cannibalism is just around the corner.
In the year 41 post-Uxor, countries like New France are heavily militarized and entire districts out of control, such as South Paris 5, governed by the criminal boss Big Blue, an “artist” who collects sadistic human installations. The wealthy dine at illegal cannibalistic restaurants like Le Sphinx Tatoué, where they can have sadistic sex and unorthodox meals with “disposable” prostitutes, while mutated rats compete with human wretches on the streets for scraps of food.
New Moon Corporation is making a profit out of this mess, experimenting with new drugs and breeding humans to produce meat for the rich. To this end, NARAKA, aka New Belmarsh Penitentiary, is built on the Moon, a way to control the spreading criminality by removing from the planet the worst scum of Earth. This includes Kiki Léger, former South Paris 5 prostitute turned professional assassin. In Naraka, inmates are slaughtered, packaged, and delivered to Earth in cans, while a lunatic pedophile priest makes up a new heretic religion. Even worse things happen in the lower layers of the underground, hive-like structure … From the internal Illustrations by Stefano Cardoselli: 'The Slicer' and 'Kiki' Praise for NARAKA

"Alessandro Manzetti’s NARAKA is a dark, frightening and heartbreaking novel that takes an unflinching look at evil and courage. Highly recommended!” --Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of GLIMPSE and V-WARS

“I am unable to think of a more original novel in any genre. Each paragraph is a delectable new treat in what you should think of as a diabolical Whitman’s Sampler from Hell. I’ve never taken LSD and now I don’t have to; after finishing NARAKA, its hideous, chimeral imagery raced ceaseless Tartarean circles in my brain, like a spew of appalling living things, and I was helpless to stop it. This book is a must-read for fans of any type of heavy-weight non-mainstream fiction, an unparalleled literary carpet-bombing that will warp your mind for some time to come.”
--Edward Lee, author of THE BIGHEAD and WHITE TRASH GOTHIC

"Alessandro Manzetti’s NARAKA is a wildly original tour de force, a feverish and fascinating nightmare of a novel that gets under your skin and nests there in an alarmingly unsettling way. Many works deal with the darker sides of existence and what it means to be alive, to be human, or something other than human—anything but human—but I have honestly never read anything that does it quite the way Manzetti does it in NARAKA. Raw and deeply disturbing, I can guarantee you NARAKA is unlike anything you’ve experienced before. Not to be missed”
–Greg F. Gifune, author of SAVAGE and A WINTER SLEEP

"Welcome to New Belmarsh, Naraka, a space farm of human meat where Slicers dispatch fleeing captives, organs are mechanically excised from the flesh and kept alive, and torture and death in a thousand variations await the dying and damned who reside here.
A gut punch of a novel that brings to mind–and then exceeds–the hellscapes of Dante and Bosch, read NARAKA at your own risk: its images will infiltrate your being and take root in your mind. You cant unvisit Naraka or unsee its unholy delving into what author Alessandro Manzetti so aptly calls “the unaware bestiality of the human race.”
–Lucy Taylor, author of THE SAFETY OF UNKNOWN CITIES

"A stark, brutal vision of a future shrouded in darkness and steeped in blood. This is sharp-edged science fiction that claws deeper into your brain with every word you read."
--Tim Waggoner, author of THE MOUTH OF THE DARK

“Naraka” is a term in Hindu and Buddhist cosmology generally translated as “hell.” Naraka, the novel, is a brutal, vivid, hi-tech portrait of a future world where life is cheap, food is scarce, and cannibalism has become the order of the day. One of the major strengths of Naraka lies in its language, which whirlwinds forward with a kind manic intensity that sweeps the reader along with it. Manzetti is a gifted poet, and many of the prose passages here could stand alone as poetry. Highly recommended for literary aficionados of dark and explicit horror."
--Bruce Boston, SFPA Grandmaster, author of DARK ROADS
​
"This is a wild ride through a new kind of hell. Visceral. Reminiscent of Clive Barker. I don't know how else to describe it."
--Michael Bailey, Bram Stoker Award Winning Author
From the internal illustrations by Stefano Cardoselli: 'Sibel' and 'Big Blue' Grab your copy at Amazon

Premiere Readings: Jonathan Maberry about NARAKA

Author Jonathan Maberry about my forthcoming novel NARAKA (In English, Independent Legions, May 2018) 
Alessandro Manzetti’s NARAKA is a dark, frightening and heartbreaking novel that takes an unflinching look at evil and courage. Highly recommended!” -Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of GLIMPSE and V-WARS NARAKA - The Ultimate Human Breeding
​Coming out in May, 2018
​Independent Legions

Premiere Readings: Lucy Taylor about NARAKA

Author Lucy Taylor about my forthcoming novel NARAKA (In English, Independent Legions, May 2018) 

"Welcome to New Belmarsh, Naraka, a space farm of human meat where Slicers dispatch fleeing captives, organs are mechanically excised from the flesh and kept alive, and torture and death in a thousand variations await the dying and damned who reside here.
A gut punch of a novel that brings to mind–and then exceeds–the hellscapes of Dante and Bosch, read NARAKA at your own risk: its images will infiltrate your being and take root in your mind. You cant unvisit Naraka or unsee its unholy delving into what author Alessandro Manzetti so aptly calls “the unaware bestiality of the human race.”
–Lucy Taylor, author of 'The Safety of Unknown Cities'

Videorecensione del GIARDINO DELLE DELIZIE - Killer Version

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​Il libro, pubblicato in edizione collection da Independent Legions (tiratura super-limitata e copie numerate e autografate), illustrato da Stefano Cardoselli, è acquistabile sullo Store dell'Editore e in alcune librerie specializzate.
​Il video contiene anche la recensione dell'antologia 'Shining in the Dark' di AA. VV.