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Book Cover for: City of Dreadful Night: A Tale of Horror and the Macabre in India, Lee Siegel

City of Dreadful Night: A Tale of Horror and the Macabre in India

Lee Siegel

City of Dreadful Night is an astonishing work of fiction, a tangle of tales that transports the reader from the Medieval India of magicians, witches, and vampires, through the British colonial period with its culture clashes and simmering unrest, into the chaos and political terror of contemporary India. Flesh-eating demons, Rajiv Gandhi's assassin, even Bram Stoker and Dracula populate the serpentine narrative, which intermingles stories about the characters with the terrifying tales they tell. At the heart of the book is an itinerant teller of ghost tales called Brahm Kathuwala, an old man wearing amulets around his neck and a silk top hat with peacock plumes. As Siegel follows him all over north India, Brahm's life story is revealed through countless interlocking tales. We learn of his two mothers - one the destitute floor sweeper who bore him; the other a wealthy Irish woman who read and reread to him the story of Dracula. We hear of his marriage to the daughter of a cremation ground attendant and his battles against her demonic possession. We come to understand the strange life of this man who uses terrifying tales to ward off the evil he himself fears.

Book Details

  • Publisher: University of Chicago Press
  • Publish Date: Oct 31st, 1995
  • Pages: 264
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.52in - 5.49in - 0.60in - 0.70lb
  • EAN: 9780226756899
  • Categories: General

About the Author

Siegel, Lee: - Lee Siegel is professor of religious studies at the University of Hawaii. He is the author of many books, including Love in a Dead Language, Who Wrote the Book of Love?, and Love and the Incredibly Old Man, all published by the University of Chicago Press.