A History of the Devil

Novelist Neil Mann believes he knows Hell. His wife has died and he's descended into alcohol-fuelled oblivion, abandoning a successful writing career. But still his wife haunts him, in dreams that no amount of alcohol can keep at bay. Driven to the brink of breakdown, Neil returns to writing, and a story unlike any other he has ever crafted pours forth from the depths of his tortured soul. To escape the hell that is his life, Neil begins writing of the Hell of mythology, telling his tale through the eyes of Satan. As he becomes more and more engrossed in the project strange events occur: a threatening stranger tracks his every move and seems to have impossible knowledge of the story Neil is writing and his dead wife seems to escape his dreams and haunt him in reality. As he progresses through the Devil's history, reimagining Bible stories and other myths, recasting Satan as the tragic Romantic hero and passionate lover of his adored Lilith, the author starts to fear for his sanity as characters from his imaginings more and more invade his reality and his dead wife appears to be not only not dead, but not the woman he remembers at all, and he comes to realise that not only does he have a part to play in giving the Devil a voice, but also in giving the Devil form, bringing him to life to resume the ancient battle between the forces of good and evil, between Hell and Heaven. A History of the Devil is the story of one man chosen to be the voice of Satan to redress millennia of propaganda and to tell the tale of a freedom fighter, a warrior in the war on tyranny, a lover and a leader. History isn't always written by the victors.

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