Le Grand Nocturne / Les Cercles de l'épouvante

by Jean Ray, Raymond Jean-Marie De Kremer (AKA), John Flanders (AKA)

Ensemble de vingt nouvelles fantastiques reproduites des deux recueils de 1942-43:
- Ambrosius Bierce: Le veilleur de la mort
- Henri Heine: Le docteur Saul Ascher
Erckmann-Chatrian: Le blanc et le noir
- Maurice Renard: Le rail sanglant
- Francisque Parn: Le chat rouge
- Apfel & Laun: La chambre noire
- Thomas Ingolsby : Sur la lande de Tappington
- Catherine Crowe: Documents d'épouvante
- Jean Ray: La ruelle ténébreuse
- Thomas Owen: 15-12-18
- Alice Sauton: Iblis ou la rencontre avec le mauvais ange
- Gustave Vigoureux: La vieille au fichu vert
- Alphonse Denouwe: Trois . . . pour faire un choix‎

Set of twenty fantastic short stories reproduced from the two collections of 1942-43:
- ‎Ambrosius Bierce: The Watcher of Death
- Henri Heine: Doctor Saul Ascher
- Erckmann-Chatrian: The White and the Black
- Maurice Renard: The Bloody Rail
- Francisque Parn: The Red Cat
- Apfel & Laun: The Dark Room
- Thomas Ingolsby: On Tappington Heath
- Catherine Crowe: Horror Documents
- Jean Ray: The Dark Alley
- Thomas Owen: 15-12-18
- Alice Sauton: Iblis or the encounter with the bad angel
- Gustave Vigoureux: The old woman with the green scarf
- Alphonse Denouwe: Three . . . to make a choice‎

Genres: Horror

363 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Raymundus Joannes de Kremer was a Flemish Belgian writer who used the pen names John Flanders and Jean Ray. He wrote both in Dutch and French.

He was born in Ghent, his father a minor port official, his mother the director of a girls' school. Ray was a fairly successful student but failed to complete his university studies, and from 1910 to 1919 he worked in clerical jobs in the city administration.

By the early 1920s he had joined the editorial team of the Journal de Gand. Later he also joined the monthly L'Ami du Livre. His first book, Les Contes du Whisky, a collection of fantastic and uncanny stories, was published during 1925.

During 1926 he was charged with embezzlement and sentenced to six years in prison, but served only two years. During his imprisonment he wrote two of his best-known long stories, The Shadowy Street and The Mainz Psalter. From the time of his release in 1929 until the outbreak of the Second World War, he wrote virtually non-stop.

Between 1933 and 1940, he produced over a hundred tales in a series of detective stories, The Adventures of Harry Dickson, the American Sherlock Holmes. He had been hired to translate a series from the German, but he found the stories so bad that he suggested to his Amsterdam publisher that he should re-write them instead. The publisher agreed, provided only that each story be about the same length as the original, and match the book's cover illustration. The Harry Dickson stories are admired by the film director Alain Resnais among others. During the winter of 1959-1960 Resnais met with Ray in the hope of making a film based on the Harry Dickson character, but nothing came of the project.

During the Second World War Ray's prodigious output slowed, but he was able to publish his best works in French, under the name Jean Ray: Le Grand Nocturne (1942), La Cité de l'Indicible Peur, also adapted into a film starring Bourvil, Malpertuis, Les Cercles de L'Epouvante (all 1943), Les Derniers Contes de Canterbury (1944) and Le Livre des Fantômes (1947).

After the war he was again reduced to hackwork, writing comic-strip scenarios by the name of John Flanders. He was rescued from obscurity by Raymond Queneau and Roland Stragliati, whose influence got Malpertuis reprinted in French during 1956.

A few weeks before his death, he wrote his own mock epitaph in a letter to his friend Albert van Hageland: Ci gît Jean Ray/homme sinistre/qui ne fut rien/pas même ministre ("Here lies Jean Ray/A man sinister/who was nothing/not even a minister").

Reviews

[Jean-Marc Depasse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Les nouvelles sont inégales au point de vue suspense ou intrigue, mais la qualité de l'écriture mérite 5 étoiles.

[ジュリアン Len · Rating 3 out of 5]

Je suis assez mitigé. Sur les 7 nouvelles seules deux m'ont vraiment plu. Jean Ray est un auteur de genre, son écriture est poétique, onirique. Cependant, les nouvelles présentes sont assez inégales. Une préférence pour le Grand Nocturne et la ruelle ténébreuse. Deux pépites de l'épouvante.

[Mimi Van Hecke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un français difficile mais très joli et une histoire captivante. Ray est du niveau d’Edgar Allen Poe mais malheureusement méconnu

[Pascal Malosse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sans doute le meilleur recueil de Jean Ray, celui qui ouvre la période créative et faste des années 40. L'audace narrative et formelle de chaque conte surprend, desarçonne. La Hollande, Londres, les Flandres, les marais sont plus que jamais le terrain de chasse d'un mal défini, palpable, cruel, qui saute à la gorge du lecteur. Créatures et fantômes ne vous souhaitent que souffrances et malheurs. L'occasion aussi de rire jaune des petites gens et de leurs manies. Lu aux éditions espace Nord, qui contient les deux chefs d'oeuvres en plus que sont "la ruelle ténèbreuse" et le "psautier de mayence"

[Hjalmarsson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Le grand nocturne superbe nouvelle!!!! Envoûtante aux flous incertains entre le temps passé et l'avenir, le monde des vivants et des morts, la réalité et le cauchemardesque ou les hallucinations....