Many thanks to Nicole Aragi, Duvall Osteen, Joy Johannessen, Elisabeth Schmitz, Katie Raissian, and everyone at Grove. And to readers who suffered through early drafts of this book: William Zimmerman, Ashraf Othman, Raja Haddad, Pam Wilson, Reese Kwon.
I’m indebted to Amila Butorovic for help with all the Satan/Iblis research, to Karin Winslow for lending me the S/M books, to Helen Oyeyemi for reminding me of Lethe, and to the staff of the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, for help sifting through the papers of poet/performance artist Wayne Corbitt (1952–1997), whose life and work were a big part of this book.
The cage story is informed by the great Slawomir Mrożek’s “Birthday.”
As ever, I probably would never have been able to write a word without the support of my none-too-sane family.