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Shanti: The Sadist Heaven
"Alessandro Manzetti's NARAKA is a dark, frightening and heartbreaking novel that takes an unflinching look at evil and courage. Highly recommended!" --Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of GLIMPSE and V-WARS"I am unable to think of a more original novel in any genre. I've never taken LSD and now I don't have to; after finishing NARAKA, its hideous, chimeral imagery raced ceaseless Tartarean circles in my brain, like a spew of appalling living things, and I was helpless to stop it. This book is a must-read for fans of any type of heavy-weight non-mainstream fiction, an unparalleled literary carpet-bombing that will warp your mind for some time to come." --Edward Lee, author of THE BIGHEAD and WHITE TRASH GOTHIC"A frenzied explosion of controlled lunacy unlike anything else you'll read this year ... or next."--David J. Schow, author of THE SHAFT"A gut punch of a novel that brings to mind-and then exceeds-the hellscapes of Dante and Bosch, read NARAKA at your own its images will infiltrate your being and take root in your mind."-Lucy Taylor, author of THE SAFETY OF UNKNOWN CITIES"A stark, brutal vision of a future shrouded in darkness and steeped in blood. This is sharp-edged science fiction that claws deeper into your brain with every word you read."--Tim Waggoner, author of THE MOUTH OF THE DARK"Many works deal with the darker sides of existence and what it means to be alive, to be human, or something other than human--anything but human--but I have honestly never read anything that does it quite the way Manzetti does it in NARAKA. Raw and deeply disturbing, I can guarantee you NARAKA is unlike anything you've experienced before. Not to be missed"-Greg F. Gifune, author of SAVAGE and A WINTER SLEEP"This is a wild ride through a new kind of hell. Visceral. Reminiscent of Clive Barker"--Michael Bailey, Bram Stoker Award Winning AuthorChina Miéville’s epic world building meets Charlee Jacob’s beautifully brutal prose. Shanti is a horrifying look into the post-apocalyptic Earth and just what humans will do to each just to survive.The orphan sisters, Justine and Juliette, are entrusted to the care of the Sainte Marie College headed by Madame Desroches, a transgender matron of the infamous and dystopian neighborhood Paris South 5, the Hyper-Bronx of the French capital. The two sisters will become prey and predators of a brutal and hopeless world, where everybody wants to become a citizen of the mythical Shanti, the Holy City. Shanti is an artificial paradise, the last chance of a decent living following the apocalypse due to the radioactive meteor Uxor77. Now the Earth is characterized only by the annihilation of animal protein, the spread of cannibalism and brutal sexual deviances. The destinies of the two girls take shape in an apocalyptic Paris, with its red-light districts and the fashionable restaurants of human flesh, and then in the desert, among the subhuman menageries of the barren, desperate Mesoamerican Republic. Flamingo is a wicked creature that has survived the time to become the queen of Shanti, the Eldorado of Sex, whose heretic and sadist court, pulls the strings of everybody’s fate. But the New France’s criminal underworld as well as a powerful and cruel organization that control technology, the world markets of new synthetic drugs and the clandestine trade in human flesh, want to get their hands on the Holy City. Justine and Juliette become involved in different games of power; one will become predator, the other prey, always looking for faith, in spite of everything. What fate awaits them? Shanti is written as an homage to the famed sisters of the Marquis de Sade’s infamous novel Justine, as a futurization of that famous, heretic masterpiece.
216 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 26, 2019
About the author
Alessandro Manzetti
115 books82 followersAlessandro Manzetti (Rome, Italy) is a Three-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author, editor, scriptwriter and essayst of horror fiction and dark poetry whose work has been published extensively (more than 40 books) in Italian and English, including novels, short and long fiction, poetry, essays, graphic novels and collections.
English publications include his novels Shanti - The Sadist Heaven (2019) and Naraka - The Ultimate Human Breeding (2018), the novella The Keeper of Chernobyl (2019), the collections The Radioactive Bride (2020), The Garden of Delight (2017), The Monster, the Bad and the Ugly (2016, with Paolo Di Orazio), and The Massacre of the Mermaids (2015), the poetry collections Dancing with Maria's Ghost (2021), Whitechapel Rhapsody (2020), The Place of Broken Things (2019, with Linda D. Addison), War (2018, with Marge Simon), No Mercy (2017), Sacrificial Nights (2016, with Bruce Boston) Eden Underground (2015), Venus Intervention (2014, with Corrine de Winter), and the graphic novels Calcutta Horror (2019), Her Life Matters (2020) and The Inhabitant of the Lake (2021), and the Guide '150 Exquisite Horror Books' (2021)
He edited the anthologies The Beauty of Death (2016), The Beauty of Death Vol. 2 - Death by Water (2017, with Jodi Renee Lester) and Monsters of Any Kind (2018, with Daniele Bonfanti)
His stories and poems have appeared in Italian, USA, UK, Australian, Polish and Russian magazines, such as Weird Tales Magazine, Dark Moon Digest, Splatterpunk Zine, Disturbed Digest, Space and Time, The Horror Zine, Illumen, Devolution Z, Hinnom, Recompose, Polu Texni, Nothing's Sacred, Okolica Strachu, and anthologies such as Splatterpunk Forever, The Best Horror of the Year Vol. 13, Classic Monsters Unleashed, Best Hardcore Horror of the Year Vol. 2, 4, 5, 6, The Big Book of Blasphemy, Midnight Under the Big Top, Bones III, Rhysling Anthology (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021), HWA Poetry Showcase Vol. 3 and 4, The Beauty of Death Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, World of Light and Darkness, One of Us, Professor Charlatan Bardot's Travel Anthology to the Most (Fictional) Haunted Buildings in the Weird, Wild World, Tales of the Lost Vol. 3, Hope: Poems of Hope and Resilience From the Pandemic, Sorrow and many others
He edited the anthologies The Beauty of Death (2016), The Beauty of Death Vol. 2 - Death by Water (2017, with Jodi Renee Lester) and Monsters of Any Kind (2018, with Daniele Bonfanti)
Awards and Nominations:
• Bram Stoker Awards 2021 winner
• Bram Stoker Awards 2019 winner
• Bram Stoker Awards 2015 winner
• SFPA Elgin Awards 2019 winner
• Bram Stoker Awards 2019 three-time nominee
• Bram Stoker Awards 2018 nominee
• Bram Stoker Awards 2017 two-time nominee
• Bram Stoker Awards 2016 two-time nominee
• Bram Stoker Awards 2014 nominee
• Splatterpunk Awards 2019 nominee
• Splatterpunk Awards 2018 nominee
• Rhysling Awards 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 nominee
• Elgin Awards 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 nominee
• This is Horror Awards 2017 nominee
• HWA Specialty Press Awards 2017 winner (as CEO of Independent Legions Press)
Furthermore, he received honorable mentions (for stories and poems) in Ellen Datlow's 'The Best Horror of the Year' Vol. 7-8-9-10-12-13
He is the CEO & Founder of Independent Legions Publishing, editor of 'Molotov Magazine' (in Italian), HWA Active member and a former HWA Board of Trustees member. In 2021 he served the Science Fiction Poetry Association as the Rhysling Award Chair.
He lives in Trieste, Italy
website: www.battiago.com
English publications include his novels Shanti - The Sadist Heaven (2019) and Naraka - The Ultimate Human Breeding (2018), the novella The Keeper of Chernobyl (2019), the collections The Radioactive Bride (2020), The Garden of Delight (2017), The Monster, the Bad and the Ugly (2016, with Paolo Di Orazio), and The Massacre of the Mermaids (2015), the poetry collections Dancing with Maria's Ghost (2021), Whitechapel Rhapsody (2020), The Place of Broken Things (2019, with Linda D. Addison), War (2018, with Marge Simon), No Mercy (2017), Sacrificial Nights (2016, with Bruce Boston) Eden Underground (2015), Venus Intervention (2014, with Corrine de Winter), and the graphic novels Calcutta Horror (2019), Her Life Matters (2020) and The Inhabitant of the Lake (2021), and the Guide '150 Exquisite Horror Books' (2021)
He edited the anthologies The Beauty of Death (2016), The Beauty of Death Vol. 2 - Death by Water (2017, with Jodi Renee Lester) and Monsters of Any Kind (2018, with Daniele Bonfanti)
His stories and poems have appeared in Italian, USA, UK, Australian, Polish and Russian magazines, such as Weird Tales Magazine, Dark Moon Digest, Splatterpunk Zine, Disturbed Digest, Space and Time, The Horror Zine, Illumen, Devolution Z, Hinnom, Recompose, Polu Texni, Nothing's Sacred, Okolica Strachu, and anthologies such as Splatterpunk Forever, The Best Horror of the Year Vol. 13, Classic Monsters Unleashed, Best Hardcore Horror of the Year Vol. 2, 4, 5, 6, The Big Book of Blasphemy, Midnight Under the Big Top, Bones III, Rhysling Anthology (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021), HWA Poetry Showcase Vol. 3 and 4, The Beauty of Death Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, World of Light and Darkness, One of Us, Professor Charlatan Bardot's Travel Anthology to the Most (Fictional) Haunted Buildings in the Weird, Wild World, Tales of the Lost Vol. 3, Hope: Poems of Hope and Resilience From the Pandemic, Sorrow and many others
He edited the anthologies The Beauty of Death (2016), The Beauty of Death Vol. 2 - Death by Water (2017, with Jodi Renee Lester) and Monsters of Any Kind (2018, with Daniele Bonfanti)
Awards and Nominations:
• Bram Stoker Awards 2021 winner
• Bram Stoker Awards 2019 winner
• Bram Stoker Awards 2015 winner
• SFPA Elgin Awards 2019 winner
• Bram Stoker Awards 2019 three-time nominee
• Bram Stoker Awards 2018 nominee
• Bram Stoker Awards 2017 two-time nominee
• Bram Stoker Awards 2016 two-time nominee
• Bram Stoker Awards 2014 nominee
• Splatterpunk Awards 2019 nominee
• Splatterpunk Awards 2018 nominee
• Rhysling Awards 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 nominee
• Elgin Awards 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 nominee
• This is Horror Awards 2017 nominee
• HWA Specialty Press Awards 2017 winner (as CEO of Independent Legions Press)
Furthermore, he received honorable mentions (for stories and poems) in Ellen Datlow's 'The Best Horror of the Year' Vol. 7-8-9-10-12-13
He is the CEO & Founder of Independent Legions Publishing, editor of 'Molotov Magazine' (in Italian), HWA Active member and a former HWA Board of Trustees member. In 2021 he served the Science Fiction Poetry Association as the Rhysling Award Chair.
He lives in Trieste, Italy
website: www.battiago.com
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 29, 2019
Necro is extreme reading. I normally enjoy their books. It’s practically the home of Ed Lee an author I love. I just can’t stomach a book with so much child torture porn in it. Boys and girls getting tortured, sodomized, and raped is not literature . If someone can change my mind about the subject matter I will change my review. Sadism and hell is no reason to publish a book rife with kids being used in the way the author has.
May 28, 2019
If you are into extreme horror and I mean extreme you'll want to check out this one! You can read my full review here... https://horrornovelreviews.com/2019/0...
July 4, 2019
This is one crazy horrific read, not for the faint of heart. Graphic to a horror standard and beyond, I sat through it and somehow survived it. It is quite disturbing but delivers the story of hope fow the two orphans.
September 3, 2022
If you’ve ever felt like the Marquis de Sade didn’t go far enough, wasn’t perverse enough, wasn’t blasphemously violent enough, then “Shanti: The Sadist Heaven” may be the book you’re looking for. If you had trouble getting through de Sade’s erotic classics of sadism, however, you might want to give this a wide berth.
This is dark, violent, and brutal in its sexuality. It is a story of rape, torture, and abuse, set in a post-apocalyptic future where disease runs as rampant as deviance. The amount of imaginative detail invested in this diseased, decaying future is horribly exquisite, from polluted blood to the chemical rains, to the monstrous STDs that will literally leave your skin crawling.
It’s the kind of place where the horrors of an Infectious Disease Ward pale in comparison to the atrocities of a Velvet Brothel, and one where sunken churches and melted crucifixes offer an escape that has nothing to do with redemption or forgiveness. While Justine and Juliette are names that should be familiar to readers of de Sade, the way in which Manzetti subverts both their sexuality and their sacrifices is where the heart of the story lies.
Finally, it must be said that “Shanti: The Sadist Heaven” is precisely the kind of extreme horror you might expect from a Stoker Award-winning poet. It’s a story that is heavy with images and words, full of brilliant metaphors and wondrous similes, where the diversions are sometimes more powerful than the journey.
http://absoluteunderground.tv/au-maga...
This is dark, violent, and brutal in its sexuality. It is a story of rape, torture, and abuse, set in a post-apocalyptic future where disease runs as rampant as deviance. The amount of imaginative detail invested in this diseased, decaying future is horribly exquisite, from polluted blood to the chemical rains, to the monstrous STDs that will literally leave your skin crawling.
It’s the kind of place where the horrors of an Infectious Disease Ward pale in comparison to the atrocities of a Velvet Brothel, and one where sunken churches and melted crucifixes offer an escape that has nothing to do with redemption or forgiveness. While Justine and Juliette are names that should be familiar to readers of de Sade, the way in which Manzetti subverts both their sexuality and their sacrifices is where the heart of the story lies.
Finally, it must be said that “Shanti: The Sadist Heaven” is precisely the kind of extreme horror you might expect from a Stoker Award-winning poet. It’s a story that is heavy with images and words, full of brilliant metaphors and wondrous similes, where the diversions are sometimes more powerful than the journey.
http://absoluteunderground.tv/au-maga...
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews