Opium Dreams is a rather obscure little collection of short stories by a virtually unknown writer who died under bizarre and violent circumstances at the end of World War I. The stories are excellent dream-like journeys through the macabre world of addiction. From opium to absinthe, each story is a window which sheds light on the darker sides of the human mind caught in the throes of addiction. It is less didactic and more enjoyable than De Quincey--definitely the product of a mind ravaged by the subject matter of the stories. A rarity which is well worth adding to any library.

"Opium" and the other stories in this slim volume use fiction to convey the wonder and horror of narcotic addiction in a way that few other books have managed to do. It stands with De Quincey's "Confessions" and Cocteau's "Opium: Diary of a Cure" as the finest examples of the true cost of addiction, but because it's fiction it draws the reader into the world of the addict even more accurately than the other two examples do. A masterpiece that should be better known than it is.