Listen free for 30 days
Listen with offer
-
Vetaal & Vikram
- Stories of the Undead
- Narrated by: Mala Mangla
- Length: 4 hrs and 46 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
£0.00 for first 30 days
Buy Now for £10.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Summary
''This riddle can end in two ways: speech and defeat, or silence and death.'
Vetaal and Vikram is a playful retelling of one of India's most celebrated cycles of stories. The narrative of King Vikram and the Vetaal is located within the Kathasaritsagara, an 11th-century Sanskrit text. The Vetaal, who is neither living nor dead, is a consummate storyteller, and Vikram is a listener who can neither speak nor stay silent. Together they are destined to walk a labyrinth of stories in the course of a moonless night in a cremation ground.
In 1870, 11 of the Vetaal's stories were adapted to English by the famed scholar-explorer Richard Francis Burton, who tailored them to his audience's Gothic taste. Vetaal and Vikram is a contemporary response that includes Burton within its storytelling folds. Fantastical and delightful, this retelling dissolves the lines between speaker and listener, desire and duty, life and death.