Penguin Classics: Arts & Culture

This collection brings together Orwell's longer, major essays and a selection of shorter pieces that include Shooting an Elephant, "My Country Right or Left", "Decline of an English Murder" and "A Hanging". Orwell unfolds his views on subjects ranging from a revaluation of Charles Dickens to a defence of English cooking, displaying a mastery of English plain prose style and...

A new translation of Calvino's influential last work Italo Calvino was due to deliver the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard in 1985-86, but they were left unfinished at his death. The surviving drafts explore the concepts of Lightness, Quickness, Multiplicity, Exactitude, and Visibility (Constancy was to be the sixth) in serious yet playful essays that reveal Calvino's debt to...

Styles of Radical Will is Susan Sontag's second collection of groundbreaking essays, now available in Penguin Modern Classics. This collection features some of the most significant pieces of criticism from the twentieth century. Among them are the classics "The Aesthetics of Silence," offering a brilliant account of language, thought, and consciousness, and "Trip to Hanoi," penned during the Vietnam War....

Rilke's powerfully touching letters to an aspiring young poet, now in Penguin Classics. At the start of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising him on writing, love, sex, suffering, and the nature of advice itself. These profound and lyrical letters have since become hugely influential for writers and artists...

The most glamorous, witty and revealing writings charting the last eleven years of Warhol's life. Andy Warhol kept these diaries faithfully from November 1976 right up to his final week, in February 1987. Written at the height of his fame and success, Warhol records the fun of an Academy Awards party, nights out at Studio 54, trips between London, Paris...

The last diary of Che Guevara, with entries going up until two days before his death—the final, blazing record of a true revolutionary. In 1967, Che Guevara left Cuba to lead the Bolivian Liberation Army. In the jungles of Bolivia, they attempted to initiate a revolution like that in Cuba, in which Che had played such a central role. The...

Arthur Miller's classic parable of mass hysteria draws a chilling parallel between the Salem witch-hunt of 1692—'one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history'—and the McCarthyism which gripped America in the 1950s. The story of how the small community of Salem is stirred into madness by superstition, paranoia, and malice, culminating in a violent climax, is a...

Drawing together for the first time his poems, letters, essays, songs, and photographs, this wide-ranging collection is the essential record of the Beat icon. Visionary poet Allen Ginsberg was one of the most influential cultural and literary figures of the 20th century, his face and political causes familiar to millions who had never even read his poetry. Yet, he is...

Penguin Modern Classics presents Tennessee Williams' first successful play which has continued to win audiences over ever since. Abandoned by her husband, Amanda Wingfield comforts herself with recollections of her earlier, more gracious life in Blue Mountain, when she was pursued by 'gentleman callers'. Her son Tom, a poet with a job in a warehouse, longs for adventure and escape...

In The House of Bernarda Alba, a tyrannical matriarch rules over her house and five daughters, cruelly crushing their hopes and needs. The other plays here also portray female characters whose desires are tragically and violently frustrated—a woman's longing for a child in Yerma, and a bride's yearning for her lover in Blood Wedding. All appeal for freedom and sexual...

A celebration of one of the most curious and playful literary groups of the twentieth century. Brought together for the first time, here are 100 pieces of The Penguin Book of Oulipo writing, celebrating the literary group who revelled in maths problems, puzzles, trickery, wordplay and conundrums. Featuring writers including Georges Perec, Raymond Queneau and Italo Calvino, it includes poems,...

Sartre paid tribute to him in his obituary notice: 'Camus could never cease to be one of the principal forces in our cultural domain, nor to represent, in his own way, the history of France and of this century.' The Rebel is described as 'one of the great humanist manifestos' by The Times and earned Albert Camus the Nobel Prize...

Though best known in the English-speaking world for his short fictions and poems, Borges is revered in Latin America equally as an immensely prolific and beguiling writer of non-fiction prose. In The Total Library, more than 150 of Borges' most brilliant pieces are brought together for the first time in one volume—all in superb new translations. More than a hundred...

An extraordinary collection of Nabokov's little-known published material from across his life - from student essays to his last interviews. The last major collection of Nabokov's published material, Think, Write, Speak brings together a treasure trove of previously uncollected texts from across the author's extraordinary career. Each phase of his wandering life is included, from a precocious essay written while...

New to Penguin Modern Classics, a captivating exploration of the work of one of Italy's most influential - and least understood - painters. Throughout his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time, Proust repeatedly refers to colours as Tiepolo Pink or Tiepolo Red. Who exactly was the artist that he so memorably transformed into colour? The eighteenth-century Venetian painter Giambattista Tiepolo...

New to Penguin Modern Classics for Sontag's exploration of the most important artists of our time. Under the Sign of Saturn, Susan Sontag's third essay collection, brings together her most important critical writing from 1972 to 1980. In these provocative and hugely influential works, she explores some of the most controversial artists and thinkers of our time. This collection includes...

This selection of Poe's critical writings, short fiction, and poetry demonstrates an intense interest in aesthetic issues and the astonishing power and imagination with which he probed the darkest corners of the human mind. The Fall of the House of Usher describes the final hours of a family tormented by tragedy and the legacy of the past. In The Tell...

The Aeneid by Virgil, inspired by Homer and an inspiration for Dante and Milton, is an immortal poem at the heart of Western life and culture. Virgil chose as his hero Aeneas, the legendary survivor of the fall of Troy and father of the Roman race. In telling a story of dispossession and defeat, love and war, he portrayed human...

A new selection of poetry from the generation-defining author of The Copenhagen Trilogy, translated for the first time into English. While Tove Ditlevsen is now famous around the world as an extraordinary prose writer, in Denmark she has also long been celebrated as a poet. She published her first collection in her early twenties, and continued writing and publishing poetry...

A selection of Seneca's most powerful and macabre plays. Based on the legends used in Greek drama, Seneca's plays are notable for the exuberant ruthlessness with which disastrous events are foretold and then pursued to their tragic and often bloodthirsty ends. Thyestes depicts the menace of an ancestral curse hanging over two feuding brothers, while Phaedra portrays a woman tormented...

Miraculously preserved on clay tablets dating back as much as four thousand years, the poem of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, is the world's oldest epic, predating Homer by many centuries. The story tells of Gilgamesh's adventures with the wild man Enkidu, and of his arduous journey to the ends of the earth in quest of the Babylonian Noah and the...

Over the course of his short life, John Keats (1795-1821) honed a raw talent into a brilliant poetic maturity. By the end of his brief career, he had written poems of such beauty, imagination and generosity of spirit, that he had—unwittingly—fulfilled his wish that he should 'be among the English poets after my death'. This wide-ranging selection of Keats's poetry...

Reflecting the voices of poets, soldiers, the families they left behind, and their comrades who would never return, The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry, previously published as In Flanders Fields, is edited with an introduction by George Walter in Penguin Classics. Unrivalled for its range and intensity, the poetry of the First World War continues to have a...

New translation of a book that has sold over 100,000 in its previous version. A new translation of the idiosyncratic diary of a 10th-century court lady in Heian Japan. Along with the Tale of Genji, The Pillow Book is one of the major Japanese classics.

An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter by César Aira is part of 90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books. It is 1837 and a brilliant German artist sets out to cross the mountains between Chile and Argentina. Perhaps nobody before him has been able to paint the sights that unfold—vast chasms, surreal plants and animals......

A Poet Can Survive Everything But a Misprint by Oscar Wilde is one of 90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books. "All art," Oscar Wilde once announced, "is quite useless." Selected here are some of his finest prose works on the subject of art—useless, illuminating, artificial, uplifting, radical, gorgeous, boring, sublime—and his most brilliant aphorisms on the creative...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books Now you slip away in sleep. Your boat is sea-mist, dreaming, by the shore. Spain's most beloved poet, Federico García Lorca, brilliantly captures the beauty and brutality of the twentieth century. His creative imagination transcends his own experiences—be it from the perspective of an ant, a gypsy nun, or Socrates—to meditate...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books I am Black because I come from the earth's inside now take my word for jewel in the open light. Impassioned and profound, the poems in Coal showcase Audre Lorde in all her dazzling elegance and multiplicity. Mournful, celebratory, and politically conscious, this early collection is a testament to Lorde's beloved...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books Luminous and intensely lyrical, Dylan Thomas' works have captivated generations of readers, inspiring artists like The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Igor Stravinsky, and Phoebe Bridgers. This selection includes some of his best poetry, celebrating both inner and outer landscapes in the face of mortality, decay, human weakness, and beckoning readers to rage,...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books Few artists' letters are as self-revelatory as Vincent van Gogh's. From the humanistic inspiration behind The Potato Eaters to his long-time obsession with painting the vision that eventually became The Starry Night, the letters in this selection paint an intense personal narrative of his artistic development and creative process across the...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books Lay down all hope, you that go in by me . . . Through the gates of Hell, past whirling hurricanes, leering devils and rivers of blood, lies the ultimate evil - Satan himself. Masterfully translated by Dorothy L. Sayers, this first instalment of The Divine Comedy tells the captivating tale...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books May I remember always when, Your glance in secrecy met mine, And in my face your love was like A visibly reflected sign. May I remember always when, Your chiding eyes were like my death, And your sweet lips restored my life, Like Jesus's reviving breath. May I remember always when,...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books Yes, as my swift days near their goal, 'Tis all that I implore; In life and death, a chainless soul, With courage to endure. In this new selection of Emily Brontë's heart-rending poems, we uncover a soul unafraid to confront mortality, tragedy and the wild cruelty - and beauty - of...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books In October Nights, Gerard de Nerval takes us on a gentle meander through nighttime Paris - a dreamlike journey towards getting lost. Also included in this volume is Sylvie, his haunting novella of love and memory, the 'masterpiece' that inspired Proust to write In Search of Lost Time. Together, these works...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books We are the ones we have been waiting for These poems of radical love, urgency, and global consciousness reach across borders to break open the silence of oppression and the taboo, liberating both body and soul. Lively and enigmatic, Passion is June Jordan's most accomplished and animated collection. Her virtuosic, resolute...

Rescue by Czeslaw Milosz is a part of the collection of 90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books. This volume brings together two of Milosz's most celebrated works. Rescue, penned in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation, stands alongside A Treatise on Poetry, a monumental history of Poland told through four cantos. These works represent the keen insights of...

Sailing to Byzantium by W B Yeats is a part of the collection celebrating 90 classic titles marking 90 years of Penguin Books. Under bare Ben Bulben's head In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid. An ancestor was rector there Long years ago, a church stands near, By the road an ancient cross. No marble, no conventional phrase; On limestone quarried...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books Sunflower Sutra features poetry by Allen Ginsberg, whose work fomented a social and political revolution. Renowned for its rawness and spontaneity, Ginsberg's poetry changed the course of the American lyric. His verses explore themes of sex, death, and America, delivering a blend of profane and prophetic insights. The humour of his...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books I walked in a daze of illusions toward my future. Deeply felt and told with an intrepid spirit, Tales from the Heart are the intimate, formative stories from the childhood of the legendary Caribbean writer, Maryse Condé. These affecting vignettes follow Condé's early encounters with love, grief, and friendship, as she...

The Aeneid of Virgil (70-19 B.C.) describes the legendary origin of the Roman nation. It tells of the Trojan prince Aeneas, who escaped, with some followers, after Troy fell, and sailed to Italy. Here they settled and laid the foundations of Roman power. The Aeneid is a poet's picture of the world, where human affairs are controlled by human and...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books On the fields of Troy, war is raging. At its centre is Achilles—godlike, swift-footed, the greatest champion of the Greeks. But when his pride is wounded and he refuses to fight, the thread of fate begins to spin... From frenzied rampages to intimate moments of grief, this selection from Homer's Iliad...

To Read and Dream by Christina Rossetti is part of a special collection celebrating 90 classic titles over 90 years of Penguin Books. Christina Rossetti, one of the finest poets of the Victorian age, is renowned for the directness, clarity, and unmatched lyricism of her works. This selection of her poetry brings together some of her finest verses, love lyrics,...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books Rumi's verses have been a balm for readers' souls for over eight centuries. This exquisite selection brings together some of the Persian mystic's most profound, evocative and transcendent works. Exploring passion, heartbreak, friendship, faith and the myriad ways in which we move through the world, these strikingly modern poems are perfect...

A collection of Orwell's major essays, in a stunning new cover look for his great works. These essays, reviews and articles illuminate the life and work of one of the most individual writers of this century—a man who created a unique literary manner from the process of thinking aloud and who elevated political writing to an art.

The collected poems of Lewis Carroll, newly edited by Gillian Beer and published in a beautiful clothbound edition. 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe...' wrote Lewis Carroll in his wonderfully playful poem of nonsense verse, Jabberwocky. This new edition collects together the marvellous range of Carroll's poetry, including nonsense verse, parodies, burlesques,...

The first collected and annotated edition of Carroll's brilliant, witty poems, edited by Gillian Beer. 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe...' wrote Lewis Carroll in his wonderfully playful poem of nonsense verse, Jabberwocky and Other Nonsense. This new edition collects together the marvellous range of Carroll's poetry, including nonsense verse, parodies, burlesques,...

An expansive collection of George Orwell's writing on the down and out. The vivid, impassioned writings collected together in this powerful volume chronicle Orwell's first-hand experiences of life among the underclass of the 'two nations' of rich and poor. Down and Out in Paris and London is the young Orwell's memoir of his time as a struggling, often penniless writer,...

All of Orwell's brilliant writing on England and Englishness collected in a single volume. Much of George Orwell's best writing, brought together in this comprehensive collection, is concerned with England, a country that he found both endearing and frustrating. In the brilliantly perceptive The English People, he lists the national characteristics as 'suspicion of foreigners, sentimentality about animals, hypocrisy, exaggerated...

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics — irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas, and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. Today, George Orwell is perhaps most famous for his iconic novels — Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm — but in his own time, it was his remarkable nonfiction writing which drew most attention. Kind-hearted, intelligent,...

An account of Orwell's observations of working-class life in 1930s England, in a stunning new cover look for his great works. A searing account of George Orwell's observations of working-class life in the bleak industrial heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire in the 1930s, The Road to Wigan Pier is a brilliant and bitter polemic that has lost none of its...

Tolstoy's controversial treatise on the purpose of Art During his decades of world fame as a novelist, Tolstoy also wrote prolifically in a series of essays and polemics on issues of morality, social justice and religion. These works culminated in What is Art?, published in 1898. Impassioned and iconoclastic, this powerfully influential work both criticises the elitist nature of art...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. A young woman flees Athens with her lover, only to be pursued by her would-be husband and by her best friend. Unwittingly, all four find themselves in an enchanted forest where fairies and sprites soon take an interest in human affairs, dispensing magical...

A new selection of Swift's witty, acerbic and polemical prose. The political dilemma of Ireland; the state of faith in England; the charms of the Beggar's Opera; the importance of puns... This selection gathers together some of Swift's most brilliant prose, from high politics to social gossip, from savage tirades to lighthearted social satire. In addition to his classic essays,...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. A battle-hardened soldier, Antony is one of the three leaders of the Roman world. But he is also a man in the grip of an all-consuming passion for the exotic and tempestuous queen of Egypt. And when their life of pleasure together is...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. When Rosalind is banished by her uncle, who has usurped her father's throne, she flees to the forest of Arden where her exiled father holds court. There, dressed as a boy to avoid discovery, she encounters the man she loves – now a...

Alexander's translation is marked by a conviction that it is possible to be both ambitious and faithful and...communicates the poem with a care which goes beyond fidelity-to-meaning and reaches fidelity of implication. May it go on ...to another half-million copies." - Tom Shippey, Bulletin of the International Association of University Professors of English

A seminal text in the history of modern art, from one of the most famous artists of the twentieth century. In Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Wassily Kandinsky, one of the most famous abstract painters of all time, urges the reader to free themselves from art's traditional bonds to material reality. In this radical theoretical work, he calls for a...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. The King of Britain, enraged by his daughter's disobedience in marrying against his wishes, banishes his new son-in-law. Having fled to Rome, the exiled husband makes a foolish wager with a villain he encounters there—gambling on the fidelity of his abandoned wife. Combining...

First time in Penguin Classics for Rostand's popular comedy about the love-sick swain with an ear for a fine phrase and an extravagantly large nose. Poet and soldier, brawler and charmer, Cyrano de Bergerac is desperately in love with Roxane, the most beautiful woman in Paris. But there is one very large problem — he has a nose of stupendous...

In 1831, Tocqueville set out from post-revolutionary France on a journey across America that would take him nine months and cover 7,000 miles. The result was Democracy in America, a subtle and prescient analysis of the life and institutions of 19th-century America. Tocqueville's study of the strengths and weaknesses of an evolving democratic society remains a key point of reference...

New to Modern Classics When a deranged boy, Alan Strang, blinds six horses with a metal spike, he is sentenced to psychiatric treatment. Dr Dysart is the man given the task of uncovering what happened the night Strang committed his crime, but in doing so, he will open up his own wounds. Dr Dysart struggles to define sanity and justify...

Faust, Part I by Goethe reworks the late-medieval myth of Dr Faust, a brilliant scholar so disillusioned he resolves to make a contract or wager with the devil, Mephistopheles. The devil will do all he asks on Earth and seek to grant him a moment in life so glorious that he will wish it to last for ever. But if...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. Henry IV Part One follows Prince Hal, the son of King Henry IV, as he spends his time in idle pleasure with dissolute friends, among them the roguish Sir John Falstaff. However, when the kingdom is threatened by rebellious forces, Prince Hal must...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. Young King Henry wages war on France. But, tainted by his father's crimes, and with enemies among his own men, he must confront the difficult responsibilities of kingship. In rousing speeches, first at the siege of Harfleur where he urges his men 'Once...

"The perfect balance of tightness and colloquialism... likely to be the best modern version of Dante." - Bernard O'Donoghue Describing Dante's descent into Hell midway through his life with Virgil as a guide, Inferno: The Divine Comedy I depicts a cruel underworld in which desperate figures are condemned to eternal damnation for committing one or more of seven deadly sins....

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. When it seems that Julius Caesar may assume supreme power, a plot to destroy him is hatched by those determined to preserve the threatened republic. But the different motives of the conspirators soon become apparent when high principles clash with malice and political...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. An ageing king makes a capricious decision to divide his realm among his three daughters according to the love they express for him. When the youngest daughter refuses to take part in this charade, she is banished, leaving the king dependent on her...

Enter Borges' timeless worlds, where the ideal and the abstract challenge reality; where philosophical paradoxes and endless possibilities abound, and wisps of dream and magic are layered in eternal reoccurrence. To read Labyrinths is to glide through time, space, mythology and philosophy, as Borges' characters struggle towards devastating discovery. His essays and brief tantalising parables explore the enigmas of time,...

A collectible new Penguin Classics series offers beautiful, slim, clothbound editions of ten favourite poets. In 1855, Walt Whitman published his first collection of poetry, Leaves of Grass. The volume received great praise from leading Transcendentalist poet Ralph Waldo Emerson. This encouragement led to what would become a lifelong project, as Whitman expanded and rewrote the volume until his death...

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas, and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. Over the course of six years, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising him on writing, love, suffering, and the nature of advice itself. These profound and lyrical letters...

A collection of poems exemplifying Romantic aesthetic ideals, whose unique beauty lies in their revolutionary exploration of the 'overflow of powerful emotions recollected in tranquility', Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads is edited with a note on the text by Michael Schmidt in Penguin Classics. Published in 1798, Lyrical Ballads is a dazzling collaboration containing twenty-three poems by...

A collectible new Penguin Classics series—beautiful, slim, clothbound editions of ten favourite poets. Lyrical Ballads (1798) is a landmark collection of poems that marks the beginning of the English Romantic Movement in literature. Co-written by friends William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the collection broke away from traditional poetic form. Of the twenty-three poems, Wordsworth penned works such as 'Lines...

Aristophanes was a contemporary of Socrates and the last and greatest of the old Attic comedians, but unfortunately, only 11 of his plays survive. Of these, Lysistrata and Other Plays contains three: Lysistrata, The Acharnians, and The Clouds. Aristophanes was sceptical about the democratic system of government and was critical of the eagerness with which the people committed themselves to...

Penguin Classics relaunch. That proud, impassioned soul, so ungovernable now that she has felt the sting of injustice. Medea, in which a spurned woman takes revenge upon her lover by killing her children, is one of the most shocking and horrific of all the Greek tragedies. Dominating the play is Medea herself, a towering and powerful figure who demonstrates Euripides'...

Metamorphoses by Ovid is a deliciously clever and exuberant epic, presented in a gorgeous new clothbound edition. Ovid's sensuous and witty poetry brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales, ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation—often as a result of love or lust—where men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings. Beginning with the...

Winner of the 2023 Academy of American Poets Harold Morton Landon Translation Award "The best translation of a work of ancient literature that I read this year" - Emily Wilson The first female translator of the epic into English verse in over sixty years, Stephanie McCarter addresses accuracy in translation and its representation of women, gendered dynamics of power, and...

"I think this version is terrific. The light enjambed English hexameters are a great success. The effect is properly propulsive." - Prof A D Nuttall, Oxford Ovid's deliciously witty and exuberant epic starts with the creation of the world and brings together a series of ingeniously linked Greek and Roman myths and legends in which men and women are transformed,...

The most original and illuminating study of the subject New Yorker How do we see the world around us? The Penguin on Design series includes the works of creative thinkers whose writings on art, design, and the media have changed our vision forever. Susan Sontag's groundbreaking critique of photography asks forceful questions about the moral and aesthetic issues surrounding this...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. A popular soldier and newly married man, Othello seems to be in an enviable position. And yet, when his supposed friend sows doubts in his mind about his wife's fidelity, he is gradually consumed by suspicion. In this powerful tragedy, innocence is corrupted...

Milton's magnificent poem narrating Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden, now in a beautiful new clothbound edition. In Paradise Lost, Milton produced a poem of epic scale, conjuring up a vast, awe-inspiring cosmos and ranging across huge tracts of space and time. And yet, in putting a charismatic Satan and naked Adam and Eve at the centre...