Darkness and the Deep

Book excerpt: KNOWING ONLY NAKED LUST AND FEAR, THEY LIVED BY THEIR DARK AND BRUTAL PASSIONS... This critically acclaimed novel, which was first published in 1943, forms part of author Vardis Fisher’s Testament of Man, the moving and unforgettable chronicle of mankind’s long journey from cave to civilization. WERE THEY MEN...OR ANIMALS? They lived in family groups, as men do. Yet the female was always taken by force, as animals do. They walked upright, as men do. Yet they fought with their teeth and nails, ripping at each other’s flesh, as animals do. These strange and violent people belong to the bloodstained and bestial past of every one of us. These are the first men and women—more of a jungle animal than a human being...and ancestors to all of us. ‘The most ambitious project of the imagination in present-day fiction’—The New York Herald Tribune ‘One of the most brutal and disturbing novels ever written’—The Chicago Daily News ‘It is moving art...worthy of a Dostoievsky.’—William K. Gregory, The New York Times ‘An absorbing narrative...It has style, compression, clarity and a beauty of language...’—Thomas Sugrue, Saturday Review ‘A rare find...you’ll treasure it as a vision of pure delight.’—Arnold Gingrich, The Chicago Sun