The twenty-five tales included in The Oceans of Cruelty constitute one of the oldest collections of stories in the world, a book that offers both a set of uncanny, unsettling, and unforgettable narratives and a profound meditation on what weird thing it is that drives us to tell and to listen to stories. "Tales of the Vetala" is one of the names under which these stories have made their way from ancient India to the world at large, a Vetala being a corpse-spirit, and the frame story to the collection as a whole tells of a young king who bears the burden of a double spell. He has fallen under the power of a sorcerer, whose demand is that he fetch to him a Vetala to be his servant, and he has fallen under the power of the Vetala itself. Like a bat, the Vetala roosts upside down in the branches of a tree, and night after night the king is driven to take it down and bear it on his back to the burial ground where, once laid to rest, it will fall into the sorcerer's hands.
Night after night, king and spirit make their way from tree to burial ground, and as they do the spirit whispers a riddling story in the king's ear. If the king knows the answer to the riddle, he must tell it; as soon as he tells it, the spirit flies back to the tree. Thus story follows story, the king's labors continue, and neither he nor the spirit finds rest. Only when the king has no idea what the answer to the riddle may be, when he is unable at last to respond to the story at all, will his obligation to the sorcerer be fulfilled and will he be set free, though when that comes to pass--well, that's when the whole story takes a new turn.
Within this framework, The Oceans of Cruelty unfolds a suite of tales of suicidal passion, clever deceit, patriarchal oppression, obligatory self-sacrifice, changing bodies, and narrow escapes from death. Here are all the passions, and here is the play of appearance and desire from which stories are drawn and that make us come back hungry for story, wondering how will the story end and when at last will we be done with all those stories?
Douglas Penick's recreation of this ancient work brings out all its humor and horror and vitality, as well its unmistakeable relevance in a world of stories gone viral.
"Penick offers an elegant retelling of the Vetala Panchavimshati, or 25 tales of betrayal, an eerie 11th-century Sanskrit collection ... The highlight is the memorable corpse-spirit, which materializes at will like a nightmare to bedevil the king. This is worth seeking out." --Publishers Weekly
"In these twenty-five magnificent tales from an almost unremembered time, our normal human passions appear magnified before us in splendid horror. Each is a tangly vine ensnaring and twisting the lives of ordinary people, warriors, yogis, princesses, and kings into shapes appalling and unforeseen. You might love it!" --Kidder Smith, Director Asian Studies, Bowdoin College
"With his mesmerizing recreation of these stories of the Vetāla, Douglas Penick takes part in one of South Asian literature's most enduring practices: to tell stories again and again, in different languages, from differing cultural and religious perspectives. With its lyrical prose, his haunting rendition of the stories offers contemporary readers a version both personal and universal in its appeal." --Phyllis Granoff, Professor Emerita, Indian Studies, Yale University
"Douglas Penick's retelling of this ancient story cycle is brilliant, and irresistible. We are given the mythic backstory of the whole, and it breathes new depth into the tale of King and Corpse. The book's end provides fresh insight into the meaning of the whole. The writing is breathtaking. Words leap off the page rendering the written world as alive as a story told. Profound meanings surface with wild humor and emotion. Beware! You will find yourself in direct confrontation with your own mind as your heart breaks open." --Laura Simms, author of Our Secret Territory: The Essence of Storytelling
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