Lilith

Description

If you love fantasy and Gothic stories, you will definitely love George MacDonald’s Lilith. The density and complexity of the novel has been compared to the richness of the writings of Oscar Wide and Poe and it has been considered to be one of the best adult fantasy novels of the entire 19th century.

The name in the title refers to a demonic female figure that appears in Mesopotamian and Greco-Roman mythology as well as in the Bible and in Jewish tradition. In Western tradition, Lilith was the very first woman who left Adam because she refused to serve him, she was the powerful, demonic woman and a character that fitted in so snugly with the modern tradition of Gothic and horror storiesas well as with occultism.

The narrator and protagonist of the novel is Mr. Vane who lives in an old house owned by his family for generations. He meets an old man, Mr. Raven, who shows him a magic mirror in the house and takes him to see the world behind the mirror – a world populated by spirits, child-eating leopardesses, giants and dwarfs and is ruled by the empress of all evil, Lilith herself. The structure of the novel bears resemblance to Dante’s Divina Comedia – the Inferno-Purgatory-Paradise sequence is clearly recognizable, what’s more, the wise old man who takes the protagonist by the hand resembles and acts like Virgil in Dante’s opus.

The novel is rich in allegories and mythological allusions, but MacDonald is not only an erudite, he is also a master of atmosphere. The novel comes with lots of beautiful, poetic descriptions of the landscapes of the world behind the mirrorand the accounts of the events witnessed by the protagonist are narrated in excellent style as well.

MacDonald mixes religious symbolism and the most important questions in theology with a beautifully-written, quick-paced story – no wonder so many great writers of our age mention it as a book that has influenced their way of seeing the world.
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