The Devil's Atlas
By Edward Brooke Hitching

Very beautiful and illuminating' Mariella FrostrupEdward Brooke-Hitching, author of the international bestsellerand The Phantom Atlasand delivers an atlas unlike any other.and The Devil's Atlasand is an illustrated guide to the heavens, hells and lands of the dead as imagined throughout history by cultures and religions around the world. Packed with colourful maps, paintings and captivating stories, the reader is taken on a compelling tour of the geography, history and supernatural populations of the afterworlds of cultures around the globe.Whether it's the thirteen heavens ofand the Aztecs, the Chineseand Taoist netherworldand of hungry ghosts', or the Hell of the Flaming Rooster' ofand Japanese Buddhist mythologyand (in which sinners are tormented by an enormous fire-breathing cockerel),and The Devil's Atlasand gathers together a wonderful variety of beliefs and representations of life after death. These afterworlds are illustrated with an unprecedented collection of images, ranging from the marvellous infernal cartography' of the European Renaissance artists attempting to map the structured Hell described by Dante and the decorative Islamic depictions of Paradise to the various efforts to map the Garden of Eden and the spiritual vision paintings of nineteenth-century mediums.The Devil's Atlasand accompanies beautiful images with a highly readable trove of surprising facts and narratives, from the more inventive torture methods awaiting sinners, to colourful eccentric catalogues of demons, angels and assorted death deities.and A traveller's guide to worlds unseen,and The Devil's Atlasand is a fascinating study of the boundless capacity of human invention, a visual chronicle of man's hopes, fears and fantasies of what lies beyond.