Defiant, Insolent, and irreverent, the Chants de Maldoror, by the self-named Comte de Lautréamont, depicts a sinister and sadistic world of unrestrained vulgarity, savagery, and brutality. This poetic narrative follows the experiences of Maldoror: a master of disguises pursued by angels, animals, and monsters for being the incarnation of evil. The author knew his work dealt with evil as he wrote to his publisher:“Let me begin by explaining my position. I have written of evil, as Mickiewicz, Byron, Milton, Southey, A. de Musset, Baudelaire, etc., have all done. Naturally I have exaggerated the pitch along the lines of that sublime literature which sings of despair only to cast down the reader and make him desire the good as the remedy.”While ordinary people live in the midst of reveries, daydreams, common dreams, and nightmares, Maldoror lives in a continuous psychotic hallucination in which he encounters angels, gravediggers, hermaphrodites, lunatics, prostitutes, and innocent and not so innocent children, whom he victimizes—prey of his self-proclaimed pederasty. Delirious, erotic, blasphemous, yet seductive and grandiose in language and imagery, this hallucinatory novel captured the imagination of artists and writers as diverse as Verlaine, Gide, Breton, Octavio Paz—and Salvador Dali in painting. Readers seeking a conventional narrative will be surprised, for the author spares no effort to dislocate linear time, disguising voices and appearances, to penetrate the depths of animate and inanimate sojourners on their way to death.