Dagon is a novel by author Fred Chappell

Fred Chappell

Fred Davis Chappell is an author and poet. He retired after 40 years as an English professor at University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He was the Poet Laureate of North Carolina from 1997-2002...

 published in 1968. The novel is a psychological thriller with supernatural elements, attempting to tell a Cthulhu Mythos

Cthulhu Mythos

The Cthulhu Mythos is a shared fictional universe, based on the work of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft.The term was first coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent of Lovecraft, who used the name of the creature Cthulhu - a central figure in Lovecraft literature and the focus...

 story as a psychologically realistic Southern

Southern literature

Southern literature is defined as American literature about the Southern United States or by writers from this region...

 Gothic novel. It was awarded the Best Foreign Book of the Year prize by the French Academy in 1972.

This early novel by Fred Chappell is one of the author’s most widely read works. In a New York Times review, it was praised as being "of a very high order [and] precise, dry elegance".