The Insomniac Library is proud to reissue Gwendolyn MacEwen''s first novel, more than forty years after its original appearance in 1963. MacEwen described what she set out to achieve as a "sort of powerful poetic mad half-abandoned prose somewhere between [Kenneth] Patchen and Virginia Woolf." Set in a medieval past that has distinctly modern overtones, the novel is about Julian, a young man who believes he is Christ. Wandering the countryside in a horse-drawn wagon, Julian learns "to suspend logic like a whale on a thread." He becomes a master of alchemy, performing "miracles" like curing the mad and changing water into wine. When his rapt audiences begins to lose faith, Julian must pay with his life.