This book is about the inner roots of malice. It does not treat evil as a force external to human nature, as some kind of theological mystery. Malice is considered here as an anthropological fact. What stops us from examining this type of fact is our desire to keep evil at bay. Despite our tendencies to separate the mind and body, good and evil, Flahault argues that both stem from the same source within us. This knot, inherent to the human condition, is the tension between our desire for absolute self-affirmation and the fact that each of us can only exist through mediation by others. The dependence on others weighs heavy on our shoulders, hampering our very existence. Malice, then, is not merely a result of our biological constitution, but is also a response to our feelings. These can often resemble those of Milton's and Shelley's monsters, stories the author calls upon to understand features of the nature of evil that reason alone cannot grasp.