Cosmic Horror PDF EPUB Audio

The Willows

Downloads: 100+
First published: 1907
Pages: 61

Read online EPUB Download Save

Listen to The Willows Audiobook Free

Read by Michael Thomas Robinson · 2 h 21 min · 4 parts

Open the player

Section I
42:40
Section II
34:53
Section III
35:28
Section IV
28:44

The Willows (1907) is a public domain work.

The audio edition streams in the page. There is no audio file to download.

Browse all free audiobooks

About this book

Two friends paddle the Danube in flood, past Vienna and out into a wasteland of sandbanks and willow thickets, and stop for the night on a shrinking island. That is nearly the whole plot. What Blackwood does with it, across one long 1907 novella, is turn the landscape itself into the antagonist. The willows shift when no wind touches them, the sand goes on moving, and something presses at the edge of the world wanting a life in payment. Nothing is explained and nothing is fought. The dread comes from scale, from two small men realising the place they camped in was never meant for them. Lovecraft called it the finest supernatural tale in English. Available free as a PDF and EPUB.

About the author

Algernon Blackwood

Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) was an English author of supernatural fiction, admired by Lovecraft as a master of the weird. His stories evoke a numinous terror rooted in the natural world.