Lilith MacDonald George (2022)

A young scholar inherits a house with a vast mysterious library. While researching there, he is offered a raven as a guide and enters a parallel world through the looking-glass, where earthly laws do not apply and reality consists of seven dimensions. As he travels through this wondrous realm, he encounters a host of beings, including the beautiful demonic Lilith, and experiences terrifying and uplifting adventures marked above all by transformations of body and soul. Published in 1895, Lilith is the most important and darkest work by Scottish writer George MacDonald (18241905). As H. P. Lovecraft writes in his famous essay Supernatural Horror in Literature, it is a novel distinguished by compulsive bizarreness. It is generally regarded as one of the high points of Victorian fantasy and strongly influenced later authors including C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. The novel ingeniously combines the tradition of romantic fantasy prose with heroic romance, fairy-tale adventure and spiritual allegory.