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Hell and Damnation: A Sinner's Guide to Eternal Torment
A historical deep dive into the depths of hell
In Hell and Damnation , bestselling author Marq de Villiers takes readers on a journey into the strange richness of the human imaginings of hell, deep into time and across many faiths, back into early Egypt and the 5,000-year-old Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh. This urbane, funny, and deeply researched guide ventures well beyond the Nine Circles of Dante’s Hell and the many medieval Christian visions into the hellish descriptions in Islam, Buddhism, Jewish legend, Japanese traditions, and more.
In Hell and Damnation , bestselling author Marq de Villiers takes readers on a journey into the strange richness of the human imaginings of hell, deep into time and across many faiths, back into early Egypt and the 5,000-year-old Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh. This urbane, funny, and deeply researched guide ventures well beyond the Nine Circles of Dante’s Hell and the many medieval Christian visions into the hellish descriptions in Islam, Buddhism, Jewish legend, Japanese traditions, and more.
351 pages, Paperback
First published March 2, 2019
30 people are currently reading
319 people want to read
About the author
Marq de Villiers
29 books16 followersBorn in South Africa, Marq de Villiers is a veteran Canadian journalist and the author of thirteen books on exploration, history, politics, and travel, including Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource (winner of the Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction). He has worked as a foreign correspondent in Moscow and through Eastern Europe and spent many years as editor and then publisher of Toronto Life magazine. More recently he was editorial director of WHERE Magazines International. He lives in Port Medway, Nova Scotia. [Penguin Canada]
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
August 27, 2022
A positively heavenly presentation of the history and evolution of the concept of Hell, spanning some five thousand years of recorded human history. De Villiers is both a scholar and a skeptic and I, for one, found his approach as entertaining as it was educational.
“As the Middle Ages progressed, ...Satan became a creature with a bifurcated penis as long as an alder bush and made of iron, with scales and semen as cold as ice, who mated with an ever-increasing number of witches, anus and vagina at once (bifurcation has its advantages...)”
“As the Middle Ages progressed, ...Satan became a creature with a bifurcated penis as long as an alder bush and made of iron, with scales and semen as cold as ice, who mated with an ever-increasing number of witches, anus and vagina at once (bifurcation has its advantages...)”
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September 25, 2021Well, let me try to write a review By way of dictation.
If you wish to read every Kind of HELL that has ever been written for the thousands of years in all cultures, This is your book .
Every religion has a HELL. Be that Christianity, Islam Hinduism, Maybe not Judaism End of course the Jehovah Witnesses Do not believe in hell, but the Buddhist do.
I told my husband that while the Jehovah's witnesses Do not believe in a hell, they believe in the devil, Doesn't the devil have to have a home . He said the devils home is in the church's.
If you wish to read every Kind of HELL that has ever been written for the thousands of years in all cultures, This is your book .
Every religion has a HELL. Be that Christianity, Islam Hinduism, Maybe not Judaism End of course the Jehovah Witnesses Do not believe in hell, but the Buddhist do.
I told my husband that while the Jehovah's witnesses Do not believe in a hell, they believe in the devil, Doesn't the devil have to have a home . He said the devils home is in the church's.
July 11, 2019
My enjoyment of this book probably suffered from the fact that I finally got it through my library during the summer months. Some subjects don’t lend themselves to summertime reading and Hell and damnation are two of those subjects. Nevertheless, it was an interesting read (especially since I’m reading Terry Goodkind’s Stone of Tears at the same time and it seems that he was reading the section on the tortures of Hell to provide the plot for his novel.)
It is remarkable how several religions have come up with the same kinds of ideas about the afterlife. The Buddhists have lots of different hells for lots of different sins, but they are pretty much self-service establishments--no one is overseeing your punishment. Christianity and Islam don’t much trust sinner to administer their own penalties and have awarded that role to Satan otherwise known as the Devil.
The history of Hell and the Devil are also fascinating, as scholars sort out how many of those details are cribbed from the Ancient Greeks & Romans, not to mention the Caananites who rivaled the early Jews. Most of the details which have come to be accepted by fundamentalists seem to come from literature external to the Bible, which I am willing to bet that not many of them realize.
Strangely, humans don’t seem to have much imagination when it comes to Heaven, as witnessed by the final chapter of the book. The descriptions of life and activities in Heaven are quite lacklustre verging on downright boring.
An interesting partner to a book that I recently read, Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead, about saintly relics. Both books are written with scholarly interest, although both authors display a sense of humour towards their subjects.
It is remarkable how several religions have come up with the same kinds of ideas about the afterlife. The Buddhists have lots of different hells for lots of different sins, but they are pretty much self-service establishments--no one is overseeing your punishment. Christianity and Islam don’t much trust sinner to administer their own penalties and have awarded that role to Satan otherwise known as the Devil.
The history of Hell and the Devil are also fascinating, as scholars sort out how many of those details are cribbed from the Ancient Greeks & Romans, not to mention the Caananites who rivaled the early Jews. Most of the details which have come to be accepted by fundamentalists seem to come from literature external to the Bible, which I am willing to bet that not many of them realize.
Strangely, humans don’t seem to have much imagination when it comes to Heaven, as witnessed by the final chapter of the book. The descriptions of life and activities in Heaven are quite lacklustre verging on downright boring.
An interesting partner to a book that I recently read, Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead, about saintly relics. Both books are written with scholarly interest, although both authors display a sense of humour towards their subjects.
June 16, 2019
This is a survey of the different conceptions of Hell across religions and through the ages. The stories are told with a lightness proper to an author who doesn't believe in Hell.
Today's Christian Hell seems to serve two purposes: for the general populace, Hell provides the comforting faith that the injustices of this life will be dealt with definitively in the next; for the powerful in the world, Hell (and Heaven) are the stick and the carrot that keep the public from misbehaving.
The Christian Hell is painful punishment that will never end. Other Hells have had time limits, although they still lasted a very long time. Still other Hells are places where the sinner can work his or her way to enlightenment.
I found my attention wandering during some of the descriptions, but wandering less often during some narrations of "experiences" of people who have visited Hell.
A long epilogue discusses the question of just how much good hells, heavens, devils, and gods have actually done for mankind, and whether any of these things actually exist. The epilogue is worth the price of the book.
Today's Christian Hell seems to serve two purposes: for the general populace, Hell provides the comforting faith that the injustices of this life will be dealt with definitively in the next; for the powerful in the world, Hell (and Heaven) are the stick and the carrot that keep the public from misbehaving.
The Christian Hell is painful punishment that will never end. Other Hells have had time limits, although they still lasted a very long time. Still other Hells are places where the sinner can work his or her way to enlightenment.
I found my attention wandering during some of the descriptions, but wandering less often during some narrations of "experiences" of people who have visited Hell.
A long epilogue discusses the question of just how much good hells, heavens, devils, and gods have actually done for mankind, and whether any of these things actually exist. The epilogue is worth the price of the book.
May 19, 2019
A highly readable account of various versions of hell. A little repetitive at times but otherwise well-balanced and informative. I especially liked the epilogue which, along with the rest of the book, intelligently and fairly presented the ridiculousness and stupidity and nastiness that it takes to believe in hell.
August 1, 2019
A literary history of Hell (and comparable underworlds) is every bit as scintillating and page-turning as it sounds. Told with a healthy dose of snark, the book is divided into easily digestible sections, often as direct answers to questions that would naturally arise in a matter-of-fact discussion of perdition. Dark, nasty fun.
August 28, 2019
Awesome book. It’s delightful, and will keep you hooked for hours.
June 30, 2022
Very much unlike the sinners talked about in this book, I take no pride in writing this review. From the moment I saw the fantastic looking cover I really wanted to love it! But alas, some writing just can't be saved by good graphic design... There were three major points that this book really failed on to me: content, structure, and purpose. If that just sounds like a list of EVERYTHING you could possibly critique about a book, then congrats! You have an accurate idea of what I didn't like.
Content was honestly the biggest issue. I was expecting more commentary/narrativizing going in (so honestly maybe this one's on me), but just ended up getting what felt like a non-stop back to back wikidive extravaganza about what a bunch of people had to say about Hell. It started off super cool and all sociological discussing why the concept of Hell might have been invented, and then decides "nah fuck that, I'll just spit dry facts about mythology and scripture at you". And I'm not joking about that; aside from the occasional quippy comments that contributed to what I personally found to be a really bland and boring flavour of writing, it was LITERALLY just a route summary of a bunch of historical texts/folklore. It comes back in at the end with some admittedly more engaging social commentary for the epilouge, but unfortunately it's not nearly enough to save the rest of the book and comprised of talking points that I found sorta old and tired anyways (religion silly, it do bad things sometimes, why people still believe this? Etc etc etc...)
Structurally the book was a mess too. The very "factoidy" nature of the content could absolutely be absolved of its sins if one wanted to view the text as a sort of reference book, not to be read front to back but piece by piece in whatever order you decide, and it sorta still can be I guess? But I feel like in many ways the structure of the book works against this. The chapters and divisons are at best arbitrary and at worst redundant - I often found myself reading an introduction to a historical figure I had already read several times prior in the book, and the facts about each author/prophet/poet's retelling of hell are all split up and strewn about without any convenient way of finding whatever you might be looking for. Ultimately the book retraced it's steps way too often and I could rarely get fully engaged because of it.
Lastly, purpose. Why the hell was this book written? I don't mean that in the sense that I don't think it's subject matter was interesting or worthwhile, it is. But like, as a GENUINE question, why? Because the book very often feels really confused. It bounces between sociological/psychological analysis to political commentary to presenting facts to summarizing historical texts and stories, and all these conflicting ideas end up just making the book feel less intricate and more unnecessarily long and padded. I feel like you could almost take the book as is, and comb it down into several seperate books each doing their own unique thing, with all the parts becoming more poignant then the whole. In particular, I actually really wish it committed itself more to exploring Hell outside what I imagine the "Western" cultural imagination is often obsessed with, that being Judeo-Christian, Greek, and Roman myth/scripture. My favorite moments from the book were those covering the myths and religions OUTSIDE of this scope, but these moments made up what felt like a minority of the book. That being said, it has to be admitted that my lack of enjoyment with this slant in coverage itself stems from my own bias of already knowing a significant amount about these areas of focus, so perhaps this last critique isn't the fairest either.
TL;DR - I've been betrayed by a cool looking book I was really commited to liking, damning my soul to what felt like an eternity of torment in the form of reading a forced wikidive on the otherwise cool topic of Hell in myth and religion
Content was honestly the biggest issue. I was expecting more commentary/narrativizing going in (so honestly maybe this one's on me), but just ended up getting what felt like a non-stop back to back wikidive extravaganza about what a bunch of people had to say about Hell. It started off super cool and all sociological discussing why the concept of Hell might have been invented, and then decides "nah fuck that, I'll just spit dry facts about mythology and scripture at you". And I'm not joking about that; aside from the occasional quippy comments that contributed to what I personally found to be a really bland and boring flavour of writing, it was LITERALLY just a route summary of a bunch of historical texts/folklore. It comes back in at the end with some admittedly more engaging social commentary for the epilouge, but unfortunately it's not nearly enough to save the rest of the book and comprised of talking points that I found sorta old and tired anyways (religion silly, it do bad things sometimes, why people still believe this? Etc etc etc...)
Structurally the book was a mess too. The very "factoidy" nature of the content could absolutely be absolved of its sins if one wanted to view the text as a sort of reference book, not to be read front to back but piece by piece in whatever order you decide, and it sorta still can be I guess? But I feel like in many ways the structure of the book works against this. The chapters and divisons are at best arbitrary and at worst redundant - I often found myself reading an introduction to a historical figure I had already read several times prior in the book, and the facts about each author/prophet/poet's retelling of hell are all split up and strewn about without any convenient way of finding whatever you might be looking for. Ultimately the book retraced it's steps way too often and I could rarely get fully engaged because of it.
Lastly, purpose. Why the hell was this book written? I don't mean that in the sense that I don't think it's subject matter was interesting or worthwhile, it is. But like, as a GENUINE question, why? Because the book very often feels really confused. It bounces between sociological/psychological analysis to political commentary to presenting facts to summarizing historical texts and stories, and all these conflicting ideas end up just making the book feel less intricate and more unnecessarily long and padded. I feel like you could almost take the book as is, and comb it down into several seperate books each doing their own unique thing, with all the parts becoming more poignant then the whole. In particular, I actually really wish it committed itself more to exploring Hell outside what I imagine the "Western" cultural imagination is often obsessed with, that being Judeo-Christian, Greek, and Roman myth/scripture. My favorite moments from the book were those covering the myths and religions OUTSIDE of this scope, but these moments made up what felt like a minority of the book. That being said, it has to be admitted that my lack of enjoyment with this slant in coverage itself stems from my own bias of already knowing a significant amount about these areas of focus, so perhaps this last critique isn't the fairest either.
TL;DR - I've been betrayed by a cool looking book I was really commited to liking, damning my soul to what felt like an eternity of torment in the form of reading a forced wikidive on the otherwise cool topic of Hell in myth and religion
July 27, 2021
While I really liked this book as a whole, I think its one downfall was spending way too long on some things (a chapter long summary of Dante's Inferno) and not nearly enough on others (only a page was spent on scientific theories on the physics of hell, which I personally found fascinating).
I would highly recommend this to anyone who has an interest in theology or philosophy and a sense of humor.
I would highly recommend this to anyone who has an interest in theology or philosophy and a sense of humor.
February 17, 2020
I am super interested in this topic but this book was not very well written. It felt like I reread the same 50 page book over 5 times. Honestly, the epilogue was the bets part.
June 17, 2020
I appreciate the thorough research and enjoyed the author's lighthearted approach as he shed light on the dark insanity of concept of hell amongst humanity. What is the matter with us humans anyway? This book is entertaining long after I finished. I will have to read it again.
March 8, 2020
Hell and Damnation examines different ideas of hell comparatively, with chapters on the purported rulers of hell, the various types of tortures that are inflicted there, and other questions, such as the amount of time that people sent to hell are supposed to stay there.
The book is fun in places- it is certainly true, as the author points out, that a great deal more imagination has been devoted to imagining what hell is like than to the various paradises. A number of common themes emerge, such as bridges and gates, and heroes traveling to hell to bring back lost friends or lovers. The rules by which hell are said to operate often appear curiously bureaucratic. In one chapter, the author describes Assyrian ideas of the afterlife, in which gods have to send messengers between the various heavens and hells, as the deities are not allowed to step outside their domains.
Another idea that is commonplace amongst the more modern ideas of hell is that of equivalence- the suggestion that punishments would 'fit' the wrongdoing. This is a curious idea, as if there are malevolent beings torturing people, there is no obvious reason why they would be bound by equivalence. Surely, a wholly evil being would not try to make a punishment fit in any reasonable way. This idea seems to me to be redolent of industrial modernity, where many aspects of life are divided into increments- for example, pay per hour, trains running according to schedule, and so forth.
There are some negatives to the book, however. Firstly, there is a heavier focus on Christianity that I would have preferred in a comparative work. Also, and somewhat oddly, the author references Daily Mail articles several times throughout the book, in a way that feels like settling scores. Obviously, tabloid newspapers print rubbish sometimes. It was not clear what those references added, and the book would probably have been better if they were editing out.
The tone is also distracting at times. The author feels the need to add regular sarcastic comments, almost as if he was worried that the reader might start to take the various depictions of hell too seriously. These were unnecessary, and, more importantly, were often more annoying than funny.
The epilogue openly gives way to commentary, and is often shallow. More newspaper columns are quoted with no obvious justification, certainly not the intellectual weight of the columnists. Furthermore, I wonder whether the author misrepresents atheism somewhat with dogmatic comments. When a proposition is by definition unfalsifiable, such as the existence of many types of hell, then trying to falsify it may be a foolish move.
Putting all those negatives aside however, by bringing stories together from various different traditions, the book does add something to the subject, and I would recommend it to that extent.
The book is fun in places- it is certainly true, as the author points out, that a great deal more imagination has been devoted to imagining what hell is like than to the various paradises. A number of common themes emerge, such as bridges and gates, and heroes traveling to hell to bring back lost friends or lovers. The rules by which hell are said to operate often appear curiously bureaucratic. In one chapter, the author describes Assyrian ideas of the afterlife, in which gods have to send messengers between the various heavens and hells, as the deities are not allowed to step outside their domains.
Another idea that is commonplace amongst the more modern ideas of hell is that of equivalence- the suggestion that punishments would 'fit' the wrongdoing. This is a curious idea, as if there are malevolent beings torturing people, there is no obvious reason why they would be bound by equivalence. Surely, a wholly evil being would not try to make a punishment fit in any reasonable way. This idea seems to me to be redolent of industrial modernity, where many aspects of life are divided into increments- for example, pay per hour, trains running according to schedule, and so forth.
There are some negatives to the book, however. Firstly, there is a heavier focus on Christianity that I would have preferred in a comparative work. Also, and somewhat oddly, the author references Daily Mail articles several times throughout the book, in a way that feels like settling scores. Obviously, tabloid newspapers print rubbish sometimes. It was not clear what those references added, and the book would probably have been better if they were editing out.
The tone is also distracting at times. The author feels the need to add regular sarcastic comments, almost as if he was worried that the reader might start to take the various depictions of hell too seriously. These were unnecessary, and, more importantly, were often more annoying than funny.
The epilogue openly gives way to commentary, and is often shallow. More newspaper columns are quoted with no obvious justification, certainly not the intellectual weight of the columnists. Furthermore, I wonder whether the author misrepresents atheism somewhat with dogmatic comments. When a proposition is by definition unfalsifiable, such as the existence of many types of hell, then trying to falsify it may be a foolish move.
Putting all those negatives aside however, by bringing stories together from various different traditions, the book does add something to the subject, and I would recommend it to that extent.
August 4, 2022
I loved the humour threaded into this well-researched discussion. It read well and not like a text book. The author asked questions that I believe most would ask regarding the content he found, as he walked us through hell in all it’s incarnations. Fascinating, but fell a bit short for me. It seemed to lose steam near the end. I honestly was looking for something a bit more balanced between the macabre and the humorous, which is more than likely fuelled by my dark sense of humour in relation to my thoughts/beliefs in humanity.
November 2, 2022
Cheeky and a very interesting comparative deep-dive! At times I would have enjoyed even more from the author himself, although I do appreciate the brevity of the work, letting the research speak for itself. I imagine it to be fairly exhaustive. A pleasant surprise at the end to discover the author is also Canadian, living in Nova Scotia no less! An enjoyable read for sure, with a thought-provoking epilogue!
February 9, 2020
Good premise but poorly executed. It was repetitive and leaned really heavy on christian theology. This would of been so much better without the smug I'm smarter than the rubes who believe in religion shtick. Still learned a thing or too so it was still worth a look.
June 27, 2022
The fact that hell has been far more detailed in writing and perhaps imagination than heaven is curious, especially given a commonly reported positivity bias among humans. Maybe, hell is to be preferred.
January 26, 2025
3.5/5 stars. I enjoyed this as much as I could. I don’t have a ton of knowledge pertaining to various religions the author mentions. I probably would have enjoyed it more if I had. It’s a very thorough book about the history of Hell and the philosophy of the existence of it.
May 29, 2019
According to the blurb on the back, this book is "urbane" and "funny", but it actually turned out to be rather dry and boring.
July 31, 2019
How do you classify a book written as non-fiction about a fictional place?
Want to read
October 23, 2019alpha - Sean Carroll's Mindscape
June 7, 2020
Fascinating
March 20, 2021
Interesting. Not the madcap romp promised in the blurbs, tho.
October 20, 2021
A lil angry atheist, but overall a cool summary of history, literature, and world religion.
June 10, 2022
Amazing book
January 1, 2025
DNF. A great exploration of the topic for the first handful of chapters and then ifc is it repetitive and tired.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews