The Exorcist

Yet I think the demon’s target is not the possessed; it is us… the observers… 

Writing in the tradition of horror’s past masters, Blatty enlists the grotesque to conceal a more profound truth. As they battle the growing malevolence inside 11-year-old Regan McNeil, each character must confront their own self-doubt: manifestations of darkness as real as those consuming the mind and body of Regan. Chief among these is Father Karras, the troubled Jesuit priest plagued by a crisis of faith, now locked in an infernal battle of wits with Regan's tormentor. To win, he must choose between science and the catechism, and decide if the horror growing inside Regan is a product of her mind or part of a war an eternity in the making, between good and absolute evil… or is the true reckoning still to come?

The blurred lines between the sacred and the supernatural permeate Caniglia’s brooding, photographic artworks, which number, aptly, 13. Each appears like a document of a past horror, their surfaces scratched by a ghoulish nail trying to cover its tracks. The text follows that of the 40th anniversary edition, with amendments and additions from Blatty which he considered lacking in his original, including a new character now thought by the author to be ‘the most hauntingly chilling in the book’. The edition’s burnt-red binding is embossed with an inverted crucifix in the book’s title.

William Peter Blatty was an American writer and filmmaker. He studied English literature at Georgetown University and George Washington University before joining the United States Airforce, where he worked in the Psychological Warfare Division. His first book, the comic memoir Which Way to Mecca, Jack?, was published in 1960, and several comic novels followed. Blatty went on to write scripts and comedy films before publishing The Exorcist in 1971. An immediate bestseller, it was adapted by Blatty for film in 1973. Blatty’s screenplay earned him an Academy Award, and the film became the first horror movie to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Subsequent novels include The Ninth Configuration (1978), Legion (1983) – a sequel to The Exorcist – and Dimiter (2010). Blatty died in January 2017.

Jeremy Caniglia is an American painter and illustrator. He earned a BFA from Iowa State University and an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Known primarily for his work in the fantasy and horror genres, Caniglia has created book covers for authors such as Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Max Brooks, Peter Straub, and Michael Moorcock. He received the International Horror Guild Award for Best Artist in Dark Fantasy and Horror in 2004, the IlluXcon Artist Award in 2012, and the ISU Design Achievement Award in 2015. His emotionally charged work, often unsettling, continues to push boundaries as a felt reality full of symbolism and metaphors.