City of Dreadful Night

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.