Dan Simmon's Song of Kali is a bone-chilling novel that fans of horror fiction won't want to miss 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 thirty years. "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 “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 Dan Simmons (1948 -2026) was a recipient of numerous major international awards, including the Hugo Award, World Fantasy Awards, Bram Stoker Awards, and the Shirley Jackson Award. Widely considered one of the world's premier multiple-genre fiction writers, his novels included the acclaimed Hyperion Cantos, the Ilium/Olymposas cycle, Song of Kali, as well as several New York Times bestselling standalones like The Terror, Drood, and Black Hills . He lived along the Front Range in Colorado. Song of Kali By Simmons, Dan Tor Books Copyright ©1998 Simmons, Dan All right reserved. ISBN: 9780312865832 Chapter One     “ Today everything happens in Calcutta… Who should I blame ?”   —Sankha Ghosh     “Don’t go, Bobby,” said my friend. “It’s not worth it.” It was June of 1977, and I had come down to New York from New Hampshire in order to finalize the details of the Calcutta trip with my editor at Harper’s . Afterward I decided to drop in to see my friend Abe Bronstein. The modest uptown office building that housed our little literary magazine, Other Voices , looked less than impressive after several hours of looking down on Madison Avenue from the rarefied heights of the suites at Harper’s . Abe was in his cluttered office, alone, working on the autumn issue of Voices . The windows were open, but the air in the room was as stale and moist as the dead cigar that Abe was chewing on. “Don’t go to Calcutta, Bobby,” Abe said again. “Let someone else do it.” “Abe, it’s all set,” I said. “We’re leaving next week.” I hesitated a moment. “They’re paying very well and covering all expenses,” I added. “Hnnn,” said Abe. He shifted the cigar to the other side of his mouth and frowned at a stack of manuscripts in front of him. From looking at this sweaty, disheveled little man—more the picture of an overworked bookie than anything else—one would never have guessed that he edited one of the more respected “little magazines” in the country. In 1977, Other Voices hadn’t eclipsed the old Kenyon Review or caused The Hudson Review undue worry about competition, but we were getting our quarterly issues out to subscribers; five stories that had first appeared in Voices had been chosen for the O’Henry Award anthologies; and Joyce Carol Oates had donated a story to our tenth-anniversary issue. At various times I had been Other Voices assistant editor, poetry editor, and unpaid proofreader. Now, after a year off to think and write in the New Hampshire hills and with a newly issued book of verse to my credit, I was merely a valued contributor. But I still thought of Voices as our magazine. And I still thought of Abe Bronstein as a close friend. “Why the hell are they sending you , Bobby?” asked Abe. “Why doesn’t Harper’s send one of its big guns if this is so important that they’re going to cover expenses?” Abe had a point. Not many people had heard of Robert C. Luczak in 1977, despite the fact that Winter Spirits had received half a column of review in the Times . Stil