Devil's Atlas: An Explorer's Guide to Heavens, Hells and Afterworlds

'Very beautiful and illuminating' Mariella Frostrup Edward Brooke-Hitching, author of the international bestseller The Phantom Atlas delivers an atlas unlike any other. The Devils Atlas 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 its the thirteen heavens of the Aztecs, the Chinese Taoist netherworld of hungry ghosts, or the Hell of the Flaming Rooster of Japanese Buddhist mythology (in which sinners are tormented by an enormous fire-breathing cockerel), The Devils Atlas 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 Devils Atlas 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. A travellers guide to worlds unseen, The Devils Atlas is a fascinating study of the boundless capacity of human invention, a visual chronicle of mans hopes, fears and fantasies of what lies beyond.