Edmund P. Cueva – författare

This companion addresses a topic of continuing contemporary relevance, both cultural and literary. Offers both a wide-ranging exploration of the classical novel of antiquity and a wealth of close literary analysisBrings together the most up-to-date international scholarship on the ancient novel, including fresh new academic voicesIncludes focused chapters on individual classical authors, such as Petronius, Xenophon and Apuleius, as well as a wide-ranging thematic analysisAddresses perplexing questions concerning authorial expression and readership of the ancient novel formProvides an accomplished introduction to a genre with a rising profile

The Hunger (1983) is usually praised for its surface elements: style, soundtrack, erotic cool. What lies beneath that surface is far less comfortable. This book approaches Tony Scott’s debut not as a cult artifact, but as a film that touches on anxiety just before it becomes legible. Set on the brink of the AIDS era, The Hunger reimagines vampirism as a condition defined not by power or immortality, but by bodily failure, dependency, and irreversible decline. What appears to promise transcendence instead produces slow destruction. Time does not stop; it accumulates.Reading the film alongside Whitley Strieber’s novel, contemporary medical discourse, queer cultural history, and older mythic narratives of immortality, punishment, and decay, the author argues that in The Hunger, terror lies in what cannot be explained away: the body's slow betrayal and the impossibility of return. The Hunger’s lasting power is not aesthetic alone, but structural. It understands horror as endurance rather than shock, and as the knowledge that once the body is claimed, there is no exit.

The Hunger (1983) is usually praised for its surface elements: style, soundtrack, erotic cool. What lies beneath that surface is far less comfortable. This book approaches Tony Scott’s debut not as a cult artifact, but as a film that touches on anxiety just before it becomes legible. Set on the brink of the AIDS era, The Hunger reimagines vampirism as a condition defined not by power or immortality, but by bodily failure, dependency, and irreversible decline. What appears to promise transcendence instead produces slow destruction. Time does not stop; it accumulates.Reading the film alongside Whitley Strieber’s novel, contemporary medical discourse, queer cultural history, and older mythic narratives of immortality, punishment, and decay, the author argues that in The Hunger, terror lies in what cannot be explained away: the body's slow betrayal and the impossibility of return. The Hunger’s lasting power is not aesthetic alone, but structural. It understands horror as endurance rather than shock, and as the knowledge that once the body is claimed, there is no exit.

No in- or out-of-print book has the same goals, content, wide range, and scholarly approach as the present study. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, previously published books have neglected ancient Graeco-Roman texts that either cause horror or may be said to belong to the horror genre. This may partly be the result of the low esteem in which any text that did not fit neatly into one of the major and traditional literary genres was held by most scholars – particularly apparent with regard to texts that dealt with the supernatural or the occult, which were often relegated to specialists in ancient religions, rituals or beliefs. This book reviews the concepts of horror (literary, psychological, and biophysical), examines the current definitions for ‘horror fiction’, evaluates the current interest in the darker side of the classical world, and suggests new ways of thinking about horror as a genre.