What in Me Is Dark

If we ever needed a lesson about the challenges of freedom it is now. Orlando Reade’s passionate and illuminating account of the afterlives of Paradise Lost is an urgent reminder that freedom - in all senses - is poetry: there to be loved, resisted, re-worked and made to sing again for each new generation. -- Lyndsey Stonebridge, author of We Are Free to Change the World Orlando Reade's immensely readable history of the reception of Paradise Lost shows how Milton's great poem vaults across the centuries to meet new readers, its radicalism undimmed. -- Adam Smyth, author of The Book-Makers Wonderfully written, intelligent and moving... Reade reminds us that literature is action, that epic poetry has the power to liberate minds, pens, and voices. Behind every revolution is a song. As it turns out, so often that song has been Paradise Lost. -- Leah Redmond Chang, author of Young Queens Witty and sardonic... Reade writes himself into the book, not as a sleuth-researcher nor a lofty pedagogue. He is sensitive and shockable... Reade follows its zigzags, adroitly matching his episodic account of its afterlife to its key passages. It’s an ambitious structure, but he manages the intertwining of his paired strands so deftly that it feels smooth. * New Statesman * Orlando Reade writes with exhilarating style, luminous clarity, and irreverent wit. Each page of What in Me Is Dark is aflame with ideas — on the relation between politics and evil, abolition and poetry—and with the sublimity of Milton's verse, deftly brought alive. Earth may be hell, but fallen angels, as Reade shows, have been our unexpected guides toward freedom and justice. -- Anna Della Subin, author of Accidental Gods