You may want to lick or break something after reading this one.

The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman is a surreal, baroque novel about desire as a political and psychological force.

Set in a collapsing city warped by the inventions of the elusive Doctor Hoffman, the book follows a reluctant bureaucrat drawn into a world where reality is unstable, erotic fantasy overrides reason, and power operates through illusion rather than law.

Angela Carter blends satire, myth, psychoanalysis, and gothic excess to interrogate gender, control, and the stories societies tell themselves about freedom. It’s strange, funny, unsettling, and deliberately excessive—less a conventional narrative than a sequence of philosophical provocations disguised as adventure.