title: Endless Things: A Part of Aegypt
author:  John Crowley 
description: Crowley's eloquent and captivating conclusion to his &AElig;gypt tetralogy finds scholar Pierce Moffet still searching for the mythical &AElig;gypt, an alternate reality of magic and marvels that have been encoded in our own world's myths, legends and superstitions. Pierce first intuited the realm's existence from the work of cult novelist Fellowes Kraft. Using Kraft's unfinished final novel as his Baedeker, Pierce travels to Europe, where he spies tantalizing traces of &AElig;gypt's mysteries in the Gnostic teachings of the Rosicrucians, the mysticism of John Dee, the progressive thoughts of heretical priest Giordano Bruno and the "chemical wedding" of two 17th-century monarchs in Prague. Like Pierce's travels, the final destination for this modern fantasy epic is almost incidental to its telling. With astonishing dexterity, Crowley (<I>Lord Byron's Novel</I>) parallels multiple story lines spread across centuries and unobtrusively deploys recurring symbols and motifs to convey a sense of organic wholeness. Even as Pierce's quest ends on a fulfilling personal note, this marvelous tale comes full circle to reinforce its timeless themes of transformation, re-creation and immortality. <I>(May)</I> <BR>Copyright &copy; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: Endless Night
  
  Endless Night
  Endless Night
  "Every Night and every Morn
  Some to Misery are born.
  Every Morn and every Night
  Some are born to Sweet Delight,
  Some are born to Sweet Delight,
  Some are born to Endless Night."
  (Auguries of Innocence)
  
  Endless Night
  
  Book I
  
  Endless Night
  
  Chapter 1
  In my end is my beginning... That's a quotation I've often heard people say. It sounds all right, but
  what does it really mean?
  Is there ever any particular spot where one can put one's finger and say: “It all began that day, at
  such a time and such a place, with such an incident?”
  Did my story begin, perhaps, when I noticed the Sale Bill hanging on the wall of the George and
  Dragon, announcing Sale by Auction of that valuable property “The Towers,” and giving particulars
  of the acreage, the miles and furlongs, and the highly idealised portrait of “The Towers” as it might
  have been perhaps in its prime, anything from eighty to a hundred years ago.
  I was doing nothing particular, just strolling alon