The Book (short story)


"The Book" is an unfinished short story by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, believed to have been written in late 1933. It was first published in the journal Leaves in 1938, after Lovecraft's death.
In the story fragment, the narrator is given an ancient book by a strange bookseller, and when he takes it home and examines it, weird and sinister events ensue.
In October 1933, Lovecraft wrote in a letter:
The H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia suggests that "The Book" was one of the undestroyed experiments—an attempt to translate Lovecraft's poem sequence Fungi from Yuggoth into prose.
"The Black Tome of Alsophocus", first published in New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, is an attempt by Martin S. Warnes to complete "The Book". Warnes turns the fragment into a tale of possession by Nyarlathotep.