Better the Devil — Rhys Hughes

A revised edition of a collection of stories totalling 100,000 words of fiction that span the entirety of the career of cult author Rhys Hughes.... Ghosts, vampires, mythological beings, eccentrics, mad inventors, demons and other strange beings can be found cavorting here, sometimes seriously, sometimes comically, with original and unique results.

To quote the great A.A. Attanasio: "Better the Devil compiles eight chapbooks of short stories that offer dazzling disintegrations of the reality principle. These are rites of passage to the greater world beyond common sense. Their levity raises the bar on profundity and sets a comic standard for the tragic limits of our human experience. Like parables, these antic tales reveal by hiding. And like the Uncertainty Principle, they guard the secret of being from intellectual bondage. They're fun! Like Beckett on nitrous oxide. Like Kafka with a brighter sense of humor."