Evil Companions was first published by Essex House in California in 1968. When the English firm Virgin Books sought to republish the novel in 1980, the largest book distributor in Great Britain refused to handle it. When a second English publisher, Savoy Books, attempted to reissue the book, still another distributor refused to touch it. For the first time since Hubert Selby, Jr.’s Last Exit to Brooklyn was banned in England, a serious American novel was suppressed—twice—and remains effectively banned in that country to this day.

In London, New Worlds magazine reviewed the original edition of Evil Companions as a “work of genuine, if Satanic, art.” And prominent American writers have not wavered in their support for the book. The noted novelist and critic Thomas M. Disch recently wrote that “By comparison . . . Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho is only a lesson in good grooming and a Manhattan restaurant guide. . . . Michael Perkins is America’s answer to de Sade.” In the Spring 1992 issue of American Book Review, novelist Samuel R. Delany called Evil Companions “An astonishing, rich and fascinating classic.”