Devil Take It

Devil Take It is a sharp, darkly comic satire set against the backdrop of Trump-era Washington, D.C.

In this clever and timely moral fable, Satan arrives on the scene disguised as Dr. Grippin Fall, a psychiatrist with a peculiar diagnosis for Eustace Bogges, the editor of the Washington Oracle’s letters page: mortality. As the Devil guides Bogges through a series of bizarre therapy sessions, he entices him with a doctrine of laughter and mirth inspired by the 16th-century writer François Rabelais. Meanwhile, Bogges, under a pseudonym, pens a letter to his own page suggesting that society would be better off if everyone simply minded their own business. To his surprise, the slogan seizes the imagination of all of Washington’s inhabitants, with even Trump jumping on board--for his own selfish ends. The result is an absurd spiral of civil unrest that momentarily brings history to a halt.

With biting wit and resonant themes, Devil Take It skewers the political and social landscape in a way that is reminiscent of the great masters of satire from Mark Twain to Mihkail Bulgakov and John Kennedy Toole.

Daniel Debs Nossiter, son and brother of reporters, became one himself. After a stint at the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire, he joined the staff of Barron’s in New York, then free-lanced in Washington for the New Republic and the Washington Post Sunday Magazine. He now lives and writes in Santa Fe, New Mexico.