Three novels where literary fiction and philosophical inquiry converge.
Grupo Planeta · Random House · Lübbe · Aristeia Press
There are external threats. Others lie within.
A modern consciousness drawn into the force of the Dionysian.
The conflict between an ethics of excellence and the moral mediocrity of the world.
2004 · Grupo Planeta · Bilis Negra (Spanish original)
There are external threats. Others lie within.
On a stormy night, Max arrives in Shimst, a remote village in the north of Scotland. A sign bears four unsettling words: Do What Thou Wilt. The storm cuts the place off from the world. Trapped among the mountains, Max begins to experience visions of a past he does not recognize as his own. The outer world is hostile, but it is the inner space that becomes truly threatening — his mind ceases to be safe territory and his identity turns uninhabitable.
Film comps — Polanski's The Tenant · Żuławski's Possession · Scorsese's Shutter Island
Buy on Amazon →2006 · Random House España · Arcadia, Una Tragedia Moderna (Spanish original)
A modern consciousness drawn into the force of the Dionysian.
In a hidden London, a solitary writer encounters a world where the ancient mysteries of Dionysus still endure. In a theatre in the West End, she meets Daniel — a fascinating and unsettling figure whose presence dissolves the boundaries between the self and the divine. A contemporary version of Euripides' Bacchae: a tragedy about ecstasy, desire, and the price of looking directly at the sacred.
References — Guy Green's The Magus · Euripides' Bacchae
The Magus meets Donna Tartt's The Secret History — with a stronger metaphysical dimension.
Buy on Amazon →2016 · Aristeia Press · English synopsis available
Can an ethics of excellence coexist with a world drowning in mediocrity and fanaticism?
When Andrea arrives at the Visconti palazzo, an isolated villa north of Rome, she enters the intellectual and moral territory of her enigmatic master, Francesco Visconti. What begins as a professional collaboration becomes a heroic task — to protect not only his ideological legacy but his life. A mythological Western set in a decaying Italian palazzo, confronting the question of what it costs to become exactly what you are.
Film comps — Eastwood's Pale Rider · Visconti's Conversation Piece · Stevens' Shane
Buy on Amazon →Samantha Devin (Madrid, 1968). Author of the novels Bilis Negra (Black Bile), Arcadia, Una Tragedia Moderna (Arcadia, A Modern Tragedy) and Heroica. — Grupo Planeta · Plaza & Janés · Random House · Lübbe · Aristeia Press · Saga Egmont.
As a playwright, Devin is the author of The Silence (longlisted for the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, 2008), The Great Pretender, Topophilia (performed at The Rose Playhouse, London, 2015), and MEN.
Founder and co-director of Aristeia Press, currently publishing, among others, Colin Wilson's Outsider Cycle.
Creator of the cultural magazine La Conquista de Aristeia.
Grupo Planeta
Random House España
Plaza & Janés · Lübbe
Saga Egmont · Aristeia Press
Spanish (original)
English · German
The Silence · Topophilia
The Great Pretender · MEN
"Knowing reality becomes our worst nightmare."El País · on Black Bile
"Samantha Devin weaves each paragraph with the icy calm of a Patricia Highsmith, as she builds a Gothic structure of inner horror."Diario de Oaxaca · on Black Bile
"In Arcadia Samantha Devin succeeds in resurrecting myths we thought forgotten. It is a powerful, invigorating novel driven by the energy of philosophical thought."Javier Sierra · on Arcadia
"An utterly compelling novel — a different kind of novel, in the best sense of the word. In it the reader will discover what they carry within, and it will push them to go even further."Eduardo Martínez Rico, Zenda Libros · on Heroica
La Conquista de Aristeia is a journal of thought and creation on consciousness, myth, literature, film, and philosophy. Published since 2014, it gathers the conceptual cores running through Samantha Devin's work and extends them in essay form.
Visit la-conquista-de-aristeia.com →"I write from the certainty that ordinary life does not exhaust reality. Beneath the visible, the social, and the psychological there exists a vaster dimension — sacred, heroic, tragic — that continues to act, even though the modern world has forgotten how to name it."