Título: The Devil's Best Trick
Autor: Randall Sullivan
Sinopse: Part true crime story, part religious and literary history, an investigation into the nature of evil and the figure of the Devil by acclaimed journalist Randall Sullivan
Throughout history, humans have struggled to explain the evils of the world and the darkest parts of ourselves. The Devil’s Best Trick is a unique and far-reaching investigation into evil and the myriad ways we attempt to understand it – particularly through the figure of the Devil.
Sullivan’s narrative moves through centuries of historical, religious, and cultural conceptions of evil and the Devil: from the Mesopotamian and Egyptian gods to the Book of Job to the New Testament to the witch hunts in Europe in the 15th through 17th centuries to the history of the devil-worshipping “Black Mass” ceremony and its depictions in 19th-century French literature. He references major literary, religious and historical figures, from the Persian sages Zoroaster and Mani, Plato, Thomas Aquinas, John Milton, Edgar Allan Poe, Aleister Crowley, and many more, among them Charles Baudelaire, from whose work Sullivan took the title of the book.
But this is not just a cultural history – Sullivan intersperses original reporting and personal reflection. He travels to Catemaco, Mexico, to participate in the “Hour of the Witches” — an annual ceremony in which hundreds of people congregate in the jungle south of Vera Cruz to negotiate terms with El Diablo. He takes us through the most famous and best-documented exorcism in American history, which occurred in 1928 and lasted four months. He ponders the psychology of evil through his encounter with one brutal serial killer and he reports on the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s, detailing the shocking story of a small town in Texas that, one summer in 1988, unraveled into paranoia after a seventeen-year-old boy was found hanging from the branch of a horse apple tree and rumors about cult worship spread throughout the wider community.
Randall Sullivan, whose reportage and narrative skill has been called “extraordinary” and “enthralling” by Rolling Stone, takes on a bold task in this book that is both biography of the Devil and a look at how evil manifests in the world.
Contexto da obra
Como livro em inglês, esta obra costuma ganhar também uma camada própria de interesse editorial e linguístico. “The Devil’s Best Trick”, de Randall Sullivan, publicado pela editora Atlantic Monthly Press, em 2024 e com 352 páginas, integra a categoria Livros em Inglês. Por isso, o interesse da obra tende a se ampliar quando o leitor considera também a relação com a língua em que ela circula.
Editora: Atlantic Monthly Press
Páginas: 352
Ano: 2024
Edição: 1
Linguagem: en
ISBN: 0802119131
ISBN13: 9780802119131
Sobre a editora
Os livros da editora Atlantic Monthly Press apresentam uma leitura que mescla tensão e profundidade, com foco frequente em narrativas policiais e histórias de guerra que exploram conflitos humanos e sociais. O catálogo traz obras que transitam entre o thriller investigativo e o relato histórico, sempre com personagens complexos, como detetives marcados por passados difíceis ou soldados imersos em batalhas traumáticas. Além disso, há espaço para reflexões científicas e biográficas que abordam temas como comportamento humano e descobertas históricas, oferecendo um equilíbrio entre narrativas mais narrativas e outras de cunho informativo e analítico.
