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

by Lee A. Siegel

When Lee Siegel went to India to do research for a book on Sanskrit horror literature, a friend in New Delhi told him about an itinerant teller of ghost and vampire tales, a man with clusters of amulets around his neck and a silk top hat with peacock plumes on his head. Siegel set out in search of the old man—called Brahm Kathuwala—to hear his stories and to learn about his uncommon life.

But what started out as a study of other people's stories became a compelling story itself. 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 India of Brahm Kathuwala's childhood, into the chaos and political terror of contemporary India. Vividly recreating Indian literary and oral traditions, Siegel weaves a web of possession, reincarnation, and magical transformation unlike any found in the Western tradition. 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.

Siegel pursues Brahm Kathuwala from the ghastly lights of the cremation ground at Banaras through villages all over north India. Brahm's life story is revealed through countless tales along the way. We learn that he was raised, and abandoned, by two mothers—one the destitute floor sweeper who bore him; the other her employer, 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, his battles against her demonic possession, and their painful parting. We come to understand the daily life and motivations of this "horror professional," who uses terrifying tales to ward off the evil he himself fears.

This unorthodox book is more than a story; it blends scholarship, fantasy, travelogue, and autobiography—fusing and overlapping historical accounts and newscasts, literary texts and films, dreams and nocturnal tales. Siegel uses imagination to explore the relation of real terror to horror fiction and to contemplate the ways fear and disgust become thrilling elements in stories of the macabre.

This book is the product of Siegel's deep knowledge of both Indian and Western literary and philosophical traditions. It is also an attempt to come to grips with the omnipresence of political and religious terror in contemporary India. Shocking, original, beautifully written, City of Dreadful Night offers readers a captivating immersion in the wonder and terror of India, past and present.

Genres: Fiction, Horror, India

264 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 1995

About the author

Lee A. Siegel is a novelist and professor of religion at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He is not related to the critic Lee Siegel. In 1988 Siegel was a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow [1]. He has received numerous fellowships and grants including five Senior Research Fellowships from the American Institute of Indian Studies and the Smithsonian Institute (1979, 1983, 1987, 1991, 1996), four research grants from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council (1982, 1985, 1987, 1990) and one from the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies. In addition Professor Siegel has been two Presidential Awards for Excellence in Teaching (1986 and 1996). He has been a scholar-in-residence at the Rockefeller Foundation, and twice at the Bellagio Study Center (1990 and 2003). He also was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College of Oxford University (1997).
Siegel has published a number of novels including: Who Wrote the Book of Love, Laughing Matters, and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his novel, Love in a Dead Language. His most recent novel is Love and the Incredibly Old Man (2008).
His son is film actor Sebastian Siegel.

Reviews

[izrtkfliers · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maximalist horror set in India. Gory, cannibalistic, delirious, repetitive. The most interesting part to me that felt underexplored was the lascivious gaze given to the colonizer from the colonized, the replacement of Brahm's mother with this white woman who served, to him, as an idealized template of femininity and the reason why he became obsessed with horror. the book has a thesis on the link between horror and pornography, but it's all drowned out by skull cups and whatnot...

[Carlos · Rating 4 out of 5]

An American scholar arrives in India with plans to study the treatment of fear and disgust in Sanskrit literature. A young boy listens in rapt attention as an Irish woman reads to him the tale of Dracula. A wandering storyteller captivates a crowd with stories of rakshashas, prets, bhuts, vetals, ghouls, kapalikas, aghoris--and the brave heros who confront them. A promising politician finds his career and life cut short by a young woman.

Lee Siegel weaves all of these threads together into an often captivating, often moving story about horror stories and what they mean to us. The book was a lot of fun, though perhaps a little less frightening than I had hoped it would be.

[Marla · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I could sum up this book in one word it would be "frenetic". This took me forever to read - there was so much going on, and if I'm honest it was not a pleasurable read, but I'm giving it 3.5/5 stars because it was extremely well researched and creatively put together. I'd been looking for a horror novel interweaving Hindu mythology, and this was one of the few I could find.

I do need to gripe a bit after getting through this, though. This has more trigger warnings than most standard horror novels, which was surprising. Animal abuse, child abuse, domestic violence, sexual violence, creative uses of excrement and urine, overwritten descriptions and endless repetition (hey, those could be triggers for someone lol). Just so much violence against women and children from everyone (including the storyteller), it was upsetting and unexpected to the point I strongly didn't want to finish this work. I wasn't a big fan of the assassination framing device, either - it technically was a "horror" in India, but shoving the political strife in with everything else just didn't fit and felt forced. The connection between Dracula, Brahm, and other stories was a nice touch, but the way it was written - again - felt very forced. The bulk of the book was stories within stories - a story of a storyteller getting enamored with stories as well as the storyteller's story and the stories the storyteller tells - repeatedly. Mouthful. The jarring transitions left me queasy, as well - it was often unclear what was happening when.

I simply didn't enjoy the way this was written. It felt like a rollercoaster ride right after a big lunch. I think it would have been a smoother ride if the author hadn't tried so hard to make it more "interesting" by convoluting the plot. Developmental editing is so important, and that quality of narrative flow that those editors help with was entirely absent here. The actual mythos interspersed throughout *was* actually interesting and something I would like to read more about.

[GABA.inthelibrary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would probably have enjoyed this more from the source than from an American author, BUT this has beautiful prose & deeply relatable quotes about the role of horror, monstrosity, & revulsion in psychology & society.

the fact that it spans several languages & cultures creates an opportunity for commentary on both colonialism & the macabre. I went from skeptical to annotating within a couple chapters.

[Lisa Pajon · Rating 4 out of 5]

very interesting read. dark and haunting but there is a touch of reality horror which is a little upsetting. (i.e. suicide bombings)

[Eliza Young · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very dark read. Interesting if you like horror and Indian culture. Sucks you in…