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.