The Gods of Pegāna

Dunsany’s first book conjured an entire pantheon out of nothing, and much of modern fantasy grew from the seed. In a series of linked prose fragments he describes the gods of Pegāna, chief among them Māna-Yood-Sushaī, the sleeping creator who must never be woken, kept in slumber by the endless drumming of Skarl. Around this central figure gather the smaller gods who rule life, death, time, and the sea, along with the prophets and doubters who try to read their will. There is no plot in the ordinary sense. The pleasure lies in the cadence of the language and the melancholy grandeur of a mythology built purely for its own sake, unlike anything in English before it. Free to download as a PDF and EPUB.