Gods of a Nameless Country — Jeffrey Thomas

Until recently, the land its people know only as the Unnamed Country has remained hidden from the eyes and minds of the rest of the world by dense jungles and formidable mountains. And within those jungles and mountains lurk mysterious and terrifying creatures: jade-green tigers, frighteningly intelligent wild pigs, and shadow people that may just be the precursor to human beings. Caught between their ancient history and the uncertainties of the future, the people who dwell there are ruled over by Ten Jeweled Gods...and the Ten Demon Lords of Hell. Acclaim for Jeffrey Thomas's Unnamed Country stories: This is a modern classic of writing about another country or culture on the level of Lafcadio Hearn or Italo Calvino. It belongs on the shelf of any, and every, bookstore in any airport with a flight to Southeast Asia. Its stories are disturbing, insightful, macabre, vivid, grotesque, propulsive, engaging and endlessly inventive. -Paul StJohn Mackintosh, greydogtales, on The Unnamed Country.Jeffrey Thomas's unique flair for the unspeakable never shines brighter than when he visits the Southeast Asia of his dreams, and nowhere does he delve deeper into that strange green country than here. -Cody Goodfellow, author of Vertical, on Scenes From a Village.If you know something about Jeffrey Thomas's fiction, you'll know that when he's not writing Weird SF stories set in the infamous and crime-ridden Punktown he sometimes explores the unnamed country. This country resembles the Viet Nam that Thomas has frequently visited, but...Viet Nam as seen through a lens slightly distorted by, or perhaps slightly sharpened by, imagination. -Brian Evenson, from his introduction to The Spirit of Place.