"O terrible wife of Siva / Your tongue is drinking the blood, / O dark Mother! O unclad Mother." It is remarkable that prior to writing this first novel, Dan Simmons had spent only two and a half days in Calcutta, a city "too wicked to be suffered," his narrator says. Fortunately back in print after several years during which it was hard to obtain, this rich, bizarre novel practically reeks with atmosphere. The story concerns an American poet who travels with his Indian wife and their baby to Calcutta to pick up an epic poem cycle about the goddess Kali. The Bengali poet who wrote the poem cycle has disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
Horror critic Edward Bryant calls Song of Kali "an exactingly constructed, brutal, and uncompromising study of the degree to which an evil place may permeate and steep all that makes us human" and writes that it embodies "the stance of a psychologically violent novel about a violent society as a defensible and indisputably moral work of art." Song of Kali won a World Fantasy Award. --Fiona Webster
Review
"The best novel in the genre I can remember. Dan Simmons is brilliant!" --Dean R. Koontz
"Song of Kali is as harrowing and ghoulish as anyone could wish. Simmons makes the stuff of nightmares very real indeed." --Locus
"Dan Simmons understands terror and what it does to readers. Where Stephen King flinches, Simmons doesn't." --Edward Byrant, Mile High Futures
"Shock treatments abound!" --The Chattanooga Times, Tennessee
"An absolutely harrowing experience." --F. Paul Wilson
Review
"The best novel in the genre I can remember. Dan Simmons is brilliant!" --Dean R. Koontz
"Song of Kali is as harrowing and ghoulish as anyone could wish. Simmons makes the stuff of nightmares very real indeed." --Locus
"Dan Simmons understands terror and what it does to readers. Where Stephen King flinches, Simmons doesn't." --Edward Byrant, Mile High Futures
"Shock treatments abound!" --The Chattanooga Times, Tennessee
"An absolutely harrowing experience." --F. Paul Wilson
Review
"The best novel in the genre I can remember. Dan Simmons is brilliant!" --Dean R. Koontz
"Song of Kali is as harrowing and ghoulish as anyone could wish. Simmons makes the stuff of nightmares very real indeed." --Locus
"Dan Simmons understands terror and what it does to readers. Where Stephen King flinches, Simmons doesn't." --Edward Byrant, Mile High Futures
"Shock treatments abound!" --The Chattanooga Times, Tennessee
"An absolutely harrowing experience." --F. Paul Wilson
Book Description
Think you know true fear? You don't.
Think you've read the most chilling book? Not even close.
Think you can't be shocked? Good luck!
Maybe you're ready for the most truly frightening reading experience of your life, the World Fantasy Award-winning novel that's been terrifying readers for over a decade.
Song of Kali.
Song of Kali FROM THE PUBLISHER
This masterful and terrifying debut novel has earned Hugo- and Bram Stoker Award-winning author Dan Simmons the World Fantasy Award. What begins as an exploration of an exotic and forbidding world turns into a harrowing descent of steadily mounting terror when an American writer travels into the dark underworld of the cult of Kali.
SYNOPSIS
Using her stunning looks and hypnotically beautiful voice, Marcy Hanson achieved success beyond what she had imagined. But Dirk's charm pervaded her thoughts, leaving her paralyzed by love.Dirk, back to reclaim his love, bursts back into Marcy's life as disruptively as he left, but he brings more than flowers and the promise of romance.
FROM THE CRITICS
Gale Research
The novel Song of Kali, relates the gruesome action that ensues when the daughter of an American journalist is kidnapped in Calcutta, India, by deranged, bloodthirsty worshippers of the Hindu goddess Kali. Faren Miller, writing in Locus, described Song of Kali as "harrowing and ghoulish," adding that it "makes the stuff of nightmare very real indeed."
Art & Photography
Book Info
