The Crocodile (1792) is a brilliant epic, one of those rare books of which one can say that no one ever wrote anything else like it.
The eponymous Crocodile is an attempted saboteur of the Divine Plan, an instrument of the Adversary, who claims to have created and shaped the universe--but who is, after all, a liar. As for the divinity, he remains invisible, but is described as a jeweler whose wife who supervises a Society of Independents, the members of which never meet but are always in session.

Add to these concepts a plague of books, which reduces human knowledge to...