The Green Fairy, as France's great poet Baudelaire once wrote about absinthe, is the magic potion that gives life its festive hue and brightens its dark depths. However, he underestimated the trendy drink of the Belle Époque: its enjoyment could indeed lead to dark depths. Ten authors, who could not be more different from one another, have taken the modern rediscovery of absinthe as an opportunity to present their own - cheerful, quirky, or entirely dark - perspectives on the heyday of the Green Fairy.