Letters from an Imaginary Country

Roam through the captivating stories of World Fantasy, Locus, and Mythopoeic Award winner Theodora Goss (the Athena Club trilogy). This themed collection of imaginary places, with three new stories, recalls Susanna Clarke’s alternate Europe and the surreal metafictions of Jorge Luis Borges. Deeply influenced by the author’s Hungarian childhood during the regime of the Soviet Union, each of these stories engages with storytelling and identity, including her own.

The infamous girl monsters of nineteenth-century fiction gather in London and form their own club. In the imaginary country of Thüle, characters from folklore band together to fight a dictator. An intrepid girl reporter finds the hidden land of Oz—and joins its invasion of our world. The author writes the autobiography of her alternative life and a science fiction love letter to Budapest. The White Witch conquers England with snow and silence.

Table of Contents Introduction by Jo Walton “The Mad Scientist’s Daughter” “Dora/Dóra: An Autobiography” (original to this collection) “Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology” “England Under the White Witch” “Frankenstein’s Daughter” “Come See the Living Dryad” “Beautiful Boys” “Pug” “A Letter to Merlin” “Estella Saves the Village” “Pellargonia: A Letter to the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology” “Lost Girls of Oz” “To Budapest, With Love” “Child-Empress of Mars” “Letters From an Imaginary Country” (original to this collection) “The Secret Diary of Mina Harker” (original to this collection)