Against the Light
Kenneth Grant began writing the novel in the mid 1980s. He developed it in order to explore, in a fictional setting, many of the themes of 'The Book of the Spider'. The original intention was that "Against the Light" be published before The Ninth Arch, and this was achieved by its first publication in 1997. Now that the Ninth Arch itself is to be re-issued later this year, it is fitting that the new edition precedes it. "Against the Light" has been re-set, and incorporates the corrections and additions which Kenneth Grant noted in his personal copy of the 1997 edition. New illustrated endpapers have been designed to include diary entries by the author from 1985 when the novel was started. Also, some early plot notes; the first draft of a cover blurb from 1995; and a gloss where Grant gives the meaning of symbols on the front of the dust-jacket, and a colored frontispiece that reproduces the bust of Mephistopheles, a mysterious and compelling figure, which is an integral feature of this novel, and which appears elsewhere in Grant's work.
