Vetaal and Vikram: Riddles of the Undead

By Gayathri Prabhu

Book Overview

'This riddle can end in two ways: speech and defeat, or silence and death.'

Vetaal and Vikram is a playful retelling of one of India's most celebrated cycles of stories. The narrative of King Vikram and the Vetaal is located within the Kathasaritsagara, an eleventh-century Sanskrit text. The Vetaal who is neither living nor dead is a consummate storyteller, and Vikram is a listener who can neither speak nor stay silent. Together they are destined to walk a labyrinth of stories in the course of a moonless night in a cremation ground.

In 1870, eleven of the Vetaal's stories were adapted to English by the famed scholar-explorer Richard Francis Burton who tailored them to his audience's gothic taste. Vetaal and Vikram is a contemporary response that includes Burton within its storytelling folds.

Fantastical and delightful, this retelling dissolves the lines between speaker and listener, desire and duty, life and death.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9353573394
• ISBN13: 9789353573393
• Release Date: May 2020
• Publisher: HarperCollins India
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.0" x 8.0"