Chiliad: A Meditation

Dust jacket and interior illustrations by Jon Foster

Welcome to the world of Chiliad, an astonishing two-part novella by the incomparable Clive Barker. A brilliantly composed narrative filled with unforgettable images, this visionary meditation on time, history, and human suffering is surely one of Barker’s most distinctive—and distinguished—creations.

Chiliad consists of two interrelated stories, stories filtered through the melancholy imagination of a narrator perched on the banks of a river that flows backward and forward through time. The first movement, “Men and Sin,” takes place in the millennial year of 1000 AD. The second, “A Moment at the River’s Heart,” occurs exactly one thousand years—the length of a “chiliad”—later, as the new millennium approaches. At the heart of these stories are two savage, seemingly inexplicable atrocities, each of which reaches across the centuries to reflect and connect with the other. As the narratives unfold and time becomes increasingly permeable, Barker creates a dark, sorrowful portrait of the ancient human capacity for cruelty and destruction. Writing always with lucidity and grace, he addresses a host of universal concerns, among them the power of guilt and grief, and the need to find signs of meaning in the chaos that surrounds us. In the process, he examines the endless chain of consequences that inevitably proceed from a single act of violence.

At once hugely expansive and deeply personal, Chiliad is a compact masterpiece, a resonant reminder of Barker’s ability to create fictional worlds that enrich and illuminate our own.

Chiliad will feature a full-color dust jacket, as well as duotone endsheets and interior illustrations by Jon Foster.

Trade: Fully cloth bound hardcover edition and sold out at the publisher

Limited: 350 signed numbered copies, bound in leather and sold out at the publisher

Lettered: 26 signed copies, bound in leather, housed in a custom traycase and sold out at the publisher

A "PC" copy which is identical in every way to a limited or lettered copy but has the letters "PC" in the limitation line, the "PC" denotes "Publisher's Copy" and is one of a very few copies produced for use by the Publisher, usually for contributors.  

Consignment (Tim's Stuff) - Lettered (As New): 

This is a unique one of a kind copy, it is not Lettered or marked PC, the book is bound as a lettered book and housed in a lettered  traycase BUT it is designated "Founder's Copy" on the limitation line. No other copy of this book is designated in this manner, this is your chance to own the rarest and most unique Lettered State of this book.