An anthology of writings by poets and novelists brought together in celebration of specific individual movies that have in one way or another inspired, seduced, horrified or fascinated them. Offering unique glimpses into a writer's perspective on film are, among others, Salman Rushdie on THE WIZARD OF OZ, J M Coetzee on THE MISFITS, Robert Coover on Buster Keaton's SHERLOCK JR, Julian Barnes on Chabrol's MADAME BOVARY and Susan Sontag on Fassbinder's BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ.

NOSFERATU was the first vampire film, whose images still haunt our consciousness. Its director, F W Murnau, was one of the founding fathers of cinema. In this dazzling novel, we see him as a man living in despair and denial, `at home in no house and no country`, seeking escape from his stifling rural upbringing in the artistic circles and underground bars of Berlin, as a pilot during the First World War, and then as an early experimenter in the powerful, untried new artform - cinema. Filming in Czechoslovakia, Murnau descends into the depths of his own nature and his obsession with Nosferatu, the hideous vampire who drains the life from the living. Like Nosferatu, he is cold and impenetrable, tormented by self-loathing, afraid of his terrible inhumaneness. He feeds on himself and on those around him, haunted by the memory of his lover who died in the trenches, and by his continuing betrayal of that love.