The Annunciation

When Adam and Eve, having succumbed to Lucifer's temptation, are cast out of the Garden of Eden, Adam holds Lucifer to his promise, reminding him that "You said I would know everything!" So Lucifer grants Adam a dream of the world to come. And what a bizarre dream: Adam becomes Miltiades in Athens; a knight called Tancred in Byzantium; Kepler in Prague; Danton in revolutionary Paris; and a nameless suitor in Victorian London. Guided by a deceptively sweet but ultimately contemptuous Lucifer, Adam confronts an endless procession of the horror of the human story - rapists and concubines, betrayal and savagery, mindless cruelty and fanaticism.