The Aesthete Hagiographer is a sewn hardcover book of 80 pages with illustrated endpapers, a full-colour frontispiece and a dust-jacket. Edition limited to 100 copies.

The melancholy spirit of Emil Cioran pervades this allegorical diptych of sacred and profane revelations. While visiting the hallowed Shrine of Saint Margite Level in Burgundy a wayward English tourist falls inexorably under the spell of her ecstatic visions and resolves to change his dissolute and secular ways. After beholding Margite’s incorrupt remains, miraculously preserved, the reformed aesthete turns hagiographer, making his scholarly pilgrimage without suspecting that it is no more than a promenade and that everything in this world disappoints, even sanctity. Is there any other criterion for art besides closeness to heaven? Intensity and passion can be measured only in relation to the Absolute.

Derek John is originally from Dublin, Ireland. He has written short stories for magazines and anthologies such as Nemonymous, Supernatural Tales and The Ghosts and Scholars Book of Shadows.