In more than thirty volumes of novels, stories, plays, and essays Gore Vidal … has exposed and ridiculed the power of superstition from the triumph of Christianity in the fourth century to the destructive force of various religious cults today. In each of the last three decades of Vidal's career, one novel stands out for its satire of religious superstition. In the fifties Vidal published Messiah (1954) which mocks Christianity with the success of a death-worshipping cult that spreads quickly over a savior-hungry world; in the sixties he published Julian (1964) which dramatizes the last intelligence of Greece and Rome as it is challenged and destroyed by the dark power of Christian dogma; and in the late seventies he published Kalki (1978) which depicts the end of the world achieved by a self-proclaimed savior-destroyer. (p. 88)

The self-reflexive design of all three Vidal novels which dramatize his satire of religious superstition should be...