In The Flesh
Dark Fantasy Horror Supernatural Thriller Occult Fiction Gothic Fiction Splatterpunk Erotic Horror
Clive Barker’s cult-favorite novella In the Flesh—first published as part of his landmark Books of Blood—finally lands in a handsome vintage hard-cover edition, complete with its original dust-jacket. This scarce UK printing gives collectors a chance to own the story in the durable, shelf-ready format horror fans covet: no prior owner’s marks, no cracked hinges, and only a whisper of shelf-wear at the jacket edge. It is the perfect centerpiece for Barker completists who want the visceral prose in a keepsake binding rather than a mass-market paperback.
The tale itself is quintessential Barker: a claustrophobic descent into an otherworldly prison where the boundaries of guilt, desire, and flesh are violently rewritten. When petty criminal Billy Nevison inherits a cell once occupied by his executed grandfather, the stone walls become a portal to a dimension where sin takes physical form and the dead leave fingerprints in blood. Dense with Gothic atmosphere and erotic dread, In the Flesh distills everything readers love about 1980s splatterpunk—razor-sharp pacing, transgressive imagery, and a moral undertow that lingers long after the last page.
For horror collectors, this edition is a double win: a standalone novel-length presentation of a story usually found only in anthologies, and a vintage artifact that predates Barker’s transition to mainstream dark fantasy. Young adults discovering Barker for the first time get a front-row seat to the moment horror pivoted from slasher tropes to dark metaphysics, while seasoned readers can revisit the birth of motifs—secret cities, scarred messiahs, skin as scripture—that would later bloom in Weaveworld and The Great and Secret Show. Secure, tight, and unmarked, this copy is ready to slip between Ramsey Campbell and Poppy Z. Brite on any serious horror shelf.
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