William Beckford 2 hr 17 min read

The proud Caliph Vathek, insatiable in his appetites and his thirst for forbidden knowledge, strikes a bargain with a demonic stranger and sets out for the subterranean halls of Eblis.

William Beckford's 1786 novel is a foundational classic of the Gothic and Oriental tale. Sumptuous, macabre, unforgettable. Read it for one of the great Gothic masterpieces, a lush, cruel, blackly comic Arabian fantasy of a damnation-bound caliph, whose fabulous excesses and terrifying descent into hell have haunted and delighted readers for over two centuries.

In its time

Published in 1786, during the Pre-1800, voyages to the moon, subterranean worlds, and philosophical utopias, the deep roots of the imaginative tradition, from kepler and cyrano to the enlightenment.

Reading it

2 hr 17 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).