Nosferatu in the 21st Century

‘Nosferatu’ in the 21st Century is a celebration and a critical study of F. W. Murnau’s seminal vampire film Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens on the 100th anniversary of its release in 1922. The movie remains a dark mirror to the troubled world we live in seeing it as striking and important in the 2020s as it was a century ago. The unmistakable image of Count Orlok has traveled from his dilapidated castle in old world Transylvania into the futuristic depths of outerspace in Star Trek and beyond as the all-consuming shadow of the vampire spreads ever wider throughout contemporary popular culture.

This innovative collection of essays, with a foreword by renowned Dracula expert Gary D. Rhodes, brings together experts in the field alongside creative artists to explore the ongoing impact of Murnau’s groundbreaking movie as it has been adapted, reinterpreted, and recreated across multiple mediums from theatre, performance and film, to gaming, music and even drag. As such, ‘Nosferatu’ in the 21st Century is not only a timely and essential book about Murnau’s film but also illuminates the times that produced it and the world it continues to influence.

Author Biography

Simon Bacon is the editor of Gothic: A Reader (2018), Horror: A Companion (2019), Monsters: A Companion (2020), Transmedia Vampires (2021), and The Palgrave Handbook of the Vampire (forthcoming), and co-editor of Growing Up with Vampires (2019 with Katarzyna Bronk) and Spoofing the Vampire (forthcoming, with Ashley Szanter). He has also published a series of scholarly books on vampires in popular culture: Becoming Vampire: Difference and the Vampire in Popular Culture (2016), Dracula as Absolute Other (2019), Eco-Vampires (2020) and Vampires From Another World (2021).