The Night Sweeps the Mountains Away
Available for pre-order from Dancing Star Press
Praise:
“The Night Sweeps the Mountains Away is an exquisitely crafted novella about two people, both scarred and changed by the pain violence inflicted on them, who meet and change each other’s lives. It’s a spellbinding vampire story that will break, and mend, your heart.”
— Maria Haskins, author of Six Dreams About the Train and Wolves & Girls
“THE NIGHT SWEEPS THE MOUNTAINS AWAY is a gracefully written novella that delights all the senses — I could feel the breeze on my face, smell the flowering plants and the coppery tang of a blade dripping blood. But as the story pulls you in, it also asks hard questions. What happens after a failed revolution? We see exile and messianism, clinging to certain memories while shying away from others, holding on to familiarity and love. There is also a stray dog! Underneath it all, the plot skillfully weaves together classic stories in a truly unexpected way; once I saw the connections, I gasped out loud. An amazing debut title, not to be missed!”
— Bogi Takács, Hugo and Lambda award winning author, editor and critic
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One evening at summer’s end, in a town where nomads and caravans prepare to cross the mountains, the day laborer Sado meets a young woman with a painfully familiar tattoo at the corner of her eye. The two are drawn to each other by a shared history of rebellion and exile, and the mysterious woman begins to share her tale. It is a story of expulsion, forced resettlement, and the sainted creature that came to rule the woman’s fate: dervish, djinn, or maybe something more monstrous.
As the woman’s tale unfurls, Sado is further entangled in its warp and weft, even as it grows clear that his companion’s nature has been touched by the same hungry force of which she speaks. With the past bleeding into the present, the two must face a power as vast and overwhelming as the night — one that threatens not only their lives, but the very shapes of their selves.
Tanvir Ahmed 