Hashish the Lost Legend: The First English Translation of a Great Oriental Romance

Here is a lost illustrated masterpiece, a book so rare and sought after that only two copies can be found in world libraries. For the first time this classic work on a forgotten Arabian legend has been translated into English. This illustrated novel is presented as a "pictorial opera" of love, hashish, and tragedy in the time of Victorian erotica, and it contains the first known illustrations and descriptions of true hashish hallucinations.

This hardcover edition reproduces all fifty original erotic illustrations and colorful extras by illustrator Gottfried Sieben. This book will appeal to readers of Fitz Hugh Ludlow's Hasheesh Eater, Charles Baudelaire's Artificial Paradise, High Times magazine, and marijuana users everywhere.

Ronald K. Siegel, Ph.D., is a recognized world authority on drugs and drug literature. A former research professor at UCLA, he is the author of numerous books including the critically acclaimed Intoxication. He was featured in several Time cover stories and has been a consultant to Presidential Commissions and the World Health Organization. He is currently curator of the RKS Library of Drug Literature, one of the largest such libraries in the world.

Stephen J. Gertz is an historian and bibliographer of erotic literature and the literature of drugs. As a writer he has contributed to Sin-A-Rama: Sleaze Sex Paperbacks of the Sixties (2005), Everything You Know About Sex Is Wrong (2005), the Los Angeles Times, and The Huffington Post. He is the author of Dope Menace. The Sensational World of Drug Paperbacks, 1900-1975 (2008). He resides in Los Angeles where he works as an antiquarian bookseller and founding contributor to the blog Booktryst.

Fritz Lemmermayer was born in Vienna in 1857 and studied history and philosophy. He became a writer, poet, and journalist. A central and well-respected figure in literary circles, Lemmermayer maintained close relationships with writers and intellectuals, and was a friend of Gustav Mahler and Richard Wagner who he admired and visited often.