Alex Kurtagic

A lovelorn university student with a poetical disposition, Angel fails at being a man. In fact, he fails at being a human, unable to perform even the most basic of tasks without some mishap. Thousands of miles away is his beloved damsel, an American he met in London during the Spring-an elegant, traditional girl from a wealthy family. Deeply impoverished, he is forced to take a rude job to execute his design of visiting her during the Christmas break. Their reunion is to be a momentous occasion, a romantic collision of singular import, a fulfilment of cosmic proportions. Alas, early in the term he learns via social media that she has fallen under the nefarious, corrupting influences of poisonous new friends at her university, and as the weeks pass, her gradual transformation, physical and mental, becomes ever more distressing. He must reach her before it is too late But the pennies seem maddeningly elusive, and along the way appear all manner of reverses and impediments. Not least because his is a brutal world of brawling thugs, rabid protesters, loan sharks, exploitative employers, hysterical students, pranking handymen, brick-wall administrators, impatient women, and much worse. Moreover, behind this tableau, subterranean forces are moving that will dramatically alter his life, but Angel is so focused on his quest that he is missing important clues. If he would only turn to look . . .

France, 1797: the country lies prostrate, but the revolution rages on, pulverising what little is left of a nation once considered the pinnacle of European civilisation, the apex of elegance, fashion, and refinement. 17,000 people guillotined, including the King and his wife, Marie Antoinette; stately homes ransacked, libraries turned to ash, farms picked clean by theft and confiscations, severed heads and limbs on public display, and in the countryside, instances of vengeful cannibalism are recorded. All supported by high-flown rhetoric and lofty moral ideals. How could this have occurred? Was it a spontaneous anomaly, or the execution of a plot? Surely, a hard winter, the price of bread, sclerotic sinecures, and neglected provinces are not guarantees of a massacre. Could it be that it was orchestrated by seditious elements operating within secret societies? Could it be that the Enlightenment ideas they propagated were but the self-serving platitudes of narcissists intent on tearing down the monarchy, the church, and civil society? Were the Freemasons, the Illuminati, and the German Union the true instigators of the catastrophe? Alarmed by what he once observed in continental lodges and convinced that the hidden hands of destruction still posed a threat, John Robison's Proofs was an effort to warn his countrymen. He exposes the malefactors, their organisations, and their methods of recruitment and infiltration; he analyses their character and psychology; and he provides a systematic critique of their ideological vapourings. Sensational when first published but soon forgotten, Proofs has remained tremendously influential nevertheless, being the first book in English to interpret historical events as the result of a conspiracy.

Spanning nearly 30 years of the art of Alex Kurtagic, the present volume showcases five periods in the artist's life. Mainly known for book and album cover illustration, including album covers for Black Metal bands such as Troll, Tormentor, and Dimmu Borgir, Kurtagic's art explores the macabre, the satirical, and the sublime in a style that has been described as 'filmic' and 'delightfully twisted'. Kurtagic's work has been exhibited in Caracas, London, and Madrid; featured in Creative Review Choice, from among winning illustrators; and featured in Neil Aldis and James Sherry's Heavy Metal Thunder: Album Covers that Rocked the World.With a preface and introduction by the artist, the collection either digs into the background story or flies into deranged fictionalised vignettes inspired by the images. George Orwell or Louis-Ferdinand C line may occassionally come to mind. Sometimes satirical, sometimes apocalyptic, the vignettes present a sarcastic meditation on the alarming, aggressive, or infuriating aspects of modern-day society. Readers should expect to be wrong-footed frequently, uncertain as to what might come with the next turn of the page.