Vathek

The titular Vathek is a powerful caliph who, though intelligent and capable, has a tendency to indulge in sensuality. A mysterious traveler arrives in his kingdom and mesmerizes Vathek with a promise of dark powers and hedonism beyond imagination. Vathek becomes obsessed with the supernatural possibilities, and, goaded on by his power-hungry mother, embarks on a journey of blasphemy and debauchery.

Vathek is one of the best-known Gothic novels, frequently referenced in literature of the era and beyond. Beckford, an English novelist, wrote it in French over the course of just several days at the age of twenty-one, after having hosted a three-day-long party in a lavish Orientalist style. European culture at the time was delighting in Orientalism, and Beckford capitalized on this by merging a fashionable Gothic narrative with a lush Orientalist setting. The novel's emphasis on the supernatural and on the horror of ghosts, ghouls, efreets, and djinns, was something still new to many contemporary readers; and couching a familiar morality tale in the trappings of an exotic setting made the story both accessible and fresh, contributing greatly to its popularity.

The story went on to inspire Romantic writers, including Lord Byron, Southey, Moore, and Keats; Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith were also influenced by Vathek's decadent and fantastic style.

If you crave dark fantasy steeped in exotic mysticism and forbidden pleasures, Vathek delivers an intoxicating journey into supernatural corruption that influenced generations of Gothic writers. Perfect for readers who love classic tales of power, temptation, and the supernatural consequences of unchecked ambition. This landmark of Gothic literature combines Eastern mystique with Western decadence in a story that remains as mesmerizing and disturbing today as when it scandalized 18th-century readers.

The source for this public-domain ebook is Standard Ebooks (standardebooks.org). Ebooks from other sources often have typos, inconsistent spelling, missing accent marks, and missing punctuation. Ebooks from Standard Ebooks are proofread line by line against a scan of the original printed pages, then proofread again from cover to cover. They are also formatted and typeset following a professional-grade style manual, resulting in new editions supporting state-of-the-art ereader technology: automatic hyphenation, popup footnotes, complete and consistent metadata, high-resolution and scalable vector graphics, and ereader-compatible tables of contents. All of this makes the finished ebooks accurate, functional, and beautiful, a pleasure to read. (Waking Lion Press is not affiliated with or endorsed by Standard Ebooks.)