John Milton

War in Heaven. A fallen angel who refuses to be small. A garden, a forbidden tree, and the single choice that changes everything for humanity. John Milton's epic doesn't just retell Genesis - it turns Satan into one of literature's most magnetic, quotable, and disturbingly persuasive characters, then dares you to notice how much you understood his side of the argument. Nearly 400 years on, Paradise Lost still sets the bar for what an epic poem can do: cosmic scale, real psychological depth, and language built to be spoken aloud.
Essential reading for anyone who wants to know where "the devil gets the best lines" actually started.