Vintage Book of the Devil

by Francis Spufford

The devil lives in our imagination, at once menacing and strangely attractive - our oldest symbol of evil, a figure of folklore and the instantly recognizable hero of a 1000 cartoons. We can't seem to dispense with his presence, whether to raise an urbane shiver, or to explain the worst that humankind can do. Pain is real, suffering is real; why not a dark counterpart to God, dispensing both? Yet the history of the Devil tells a more ambiguous tale. Introducing this collection of diabolical appearances in scripture, fiction, drama, poetry and myth - Medieval or Miltonic, chilling or absurd - Lucifer himself reflects on a remarkable career.