We’re delighted to announce Stelliform Press’ acquisition of the novella The House of Drought by Dennis Mombauer. Mombauer lives in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he works as a consultant on climate change and as a writer of weird fiction and textual experiments. He is co-publisher of a German magazine for experimental fiction, “Die Novelle – Magazine for Experimentalism.” His first English novel, “The Fertile Clay,” will be published by Nightscape Press in 2021.
The House of Drought is a weird horror novella which Mombauer pitched during December 2020’s #PitMad Twitter pitch contest. The story delves deep into the destabilizations of climate change and the colonization of Sri Lanka. The fourth novella from Stelliform Press, The House of Drought features a world in which climate change manifestations are intertwined with the effects of colonization and the spirits of the natural world contend with the ghosts of colonial oppression.
Read more about The House of Drought
On the island of Sri Lanka, a colonial mansion stands between the forest and the paddy fields. It has seen inhabitants come and go as the days grow hotter and the harvests fail. It is a dry house, a hungry place that shifts upside-down inside its shell. The house is a labyrinth of banging pipes, of bulging stomachs, and of salt-littered floors. A glass of water opens a doorway here. A running tap attracts the house’s unquenchable thirst.
From the surrounding forest, the Sap Mother watches. She visits the house, squeezes through its holes, and burrows below its foundations, demanding recompense for what was taken from her. THE HOUSE OF DROUGHT is the story of one house’s unwitting inhabitants living between the ravages of colonization and climate change, and a forest spirit that threatens to cut a swathe through the humanity that is replacing the natural world with one of deprivation.
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