The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

Edgar Allan Poe is famed for his unsettling short stories, but he also wrote a full-length novel, his only one: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Framed as the recollections of an adventurous stowaway, Pym begins as a swashbuckling adventure novel, and after growing increasingly weirder, ends on a surreal note worthy of the best of Poe’s short stories. Despite Poe himself calling it a “a very silly book,” Pym went on to become one of his most-translated and influential works, coloring the themes of future adventure and weird fiction writers like Jules Verne and H. P. Lovecraft. It continues to influence writers to this day.