LILITH is a powerfully drawn portrait of innocence corrupted by evil—an evil so brilliant, so beautiful, so imaginatively conceived that even its violence and amorality have a fantastic splendor of their own. This is the evil of Lilith, a wildly deranged young woman who creates for herself a strange paradise of fantasy, poetry, and passion which she inhabits in preference to the real world. Her world has its own language, its own philosophy, its own music and art, all exquisitely constructed and richly sensual in their design. And it has its own religion, a religion which demands an insidious and dreadful form of human sacrifice.

First published in 1961, LILITH instantly became a classic of American literature, with over one million copies in print and a 1964 film adaptation of the same name starring Warren Beatty and Jean Seberg.