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

Lee Siegel is a professional magician and professor of religion at the University of Hawaii. His first novel is a succulent treat for horror readers. In an exuberantly described setting of India in all her violent wonders, we travel with an itinerant storyteller who wears a garland of animal skulls, a silver crucifix, and a battered English top hat adorned with peacock feathers. Here are stories within stories, starting even on the jacket copy, which claims Siegel went to India to research a book on Sanskrit horror literature and then, on the recommendation of a friend, traveled to Varanasi, City of Dreadful Night, to look for the aforementioned old storyteller--and so on into the tale. Vikram ChandraVikram Chandra writes in the New York Times that the book is "structurally complicated, gruesome, satisfyingly full of harmonies with other tales and illustrative of a variety of Indian responses to life's inexplicable catastrophes."Read More