Forty Hands of Night

In the year 1201, in the midst of the worst famine in recorded history, the adults of Egypt waged a war of extermination upon its children. Nearly every child of one of the wealthiest and militarily secure nations on earth, was hunted, captured, killed, and then eaten, by strangers, parents, and grandparents. Though the poor had nothing else to eat but their young and their dead, the wealthy engaged in child-eating-as well as the gourmet preparation of overweight people-as a culinary art. The travelling doctor, Abd al-Latif, left a detailed, yet reluctant, account of this year of grisly feasting. Forty Hands of Night is the conclusion of his story.