The Oceans of Cruelty: Twenty-Five Tales of a Corpse-Spirit: A Retelling

by Douglas J. Penick

Overview

One of the oldest books in the world, The Oceans of Cruelty is a sequence of twenty-five tales from India whose central theme is the dark power of storytelling. At the start, a young king falls into the hands of a wicked sorcerer, who orders him to find a vetala, or corpse spirit, to serve him; the young king must do as he is told, and soon enough he is also under the sway of the no less malevolent spirit. Like a bat, the spirit hangs from the branches of a tree, and the king is condemned to bear it on his back through a dark forest as it whispers a riddling story in his ear. These are tales of suicidal passion, clever deceit, patriarchal oppression, and narrow escapes from death, and as long as the king can resolve the problems they pose, his bondage continues; the vampiric creature goes on commanding his attention in the dark. Only when the king is out of answers will he at last be free, though when that comes to pass—well, that’s when the whole story takes a new turn. 

Douglas Penick’s re-creation of this ancient work brings out all its humor and horror and vitality, as well its unmistakable relevance in a world of stories gone viral.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681377674
Publisher:	New York Review Books
Publication date:	10/01/2024
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	200

About the Author

Douglas J. Penick has published widely and written texts for operas that have been performed at the Munich Biennale and the Santa Fe Opera. Wakefield Press published his and the late Charles Ré’s translation of Pascal Quignard’s A Terrace In Rome. His book of essays, The Age of Waiting, exploring the sensibility of ecological collapse, came out in 2021 from Arrowsmith Press.

Editorial Reviews

07/08/2024

Penick (Journey of the North Star) offers an elegant retelling of the Vetala Panchavimshati, or 25 tales of betrayal, an eerie 11th-century Sanskrit collection. The stories feature brutal King Vikramaditya and a demon spirit known as a vetala, whom Penick calls Corpse-Spirit. Like Scheherazade, the corpse-spirit ensnares the king with his stories, which he relates in a whisper and which have the flavor of fairy tales seasoned with horror. Most involve kings, who come across as thinly veiled cautionary examples for Vikramaditya to follow. In “Wise Birds,” kindly King Rupasena walls in his city only to find that doing so doesn’t protect him from thieves. In “Transposed Heads,” King Dharmasila’s plan for securing an heir takes a tragic turn. In “Beauty,” the lovely Unmadini fulfills her spousal duty by walking into a burning pyre after her husband betrays her king. An extra layer of creepiness is provided by the story’s setting, a dark forest haunted by unsettling sounds and fierce winds. Penick’s introduction illuminates the collection’s history and his creative process for the project, which he likens to “painting a mural, moving from large underpainted volumes to ever smaller details.” The highlight is the memorable corpse-spirit, which materializes at will like a nightmare to bedevil the king. This is worth seeking out. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"The Oceans of Cruelty is a recursive spiral weaving tales from tales, combining ancient strands of horror and beauty, brutality and mercy, duty and desire. Penick's fleet and lyrical retelling draws us back irresistibly into the shimmering abyss of our collective pre-history." —Daniil Leiderman

“Penick offers an elegant retelling of the Vetala Panchavimshati, or 25 tales of betrayal, an eerie 11th-century Sanskrit collection … The highlight is the memorable corpse-spirit, which materializes at will like a nightmare to bedevil the king. This is worth seeking out.” —Publishers Weekly

"In these twenty-five magnificent tales from an almost unremembered time, our normal human passions appear magnified before us in splendid horror. Each is a tangly vine ensnaring and twisting the lives of ordinary people, warriors, yogis, princesses, and kings into shapes appalling and unforeseen. You might love it!" —Kidder Smith
 
"With his mesmerizing recreation of these stories of the Vetāla, Douglas Penick takes part in one of South Asian literature’s most enduring practices: to tell stories again and again, in different languages, from differing cultural and religious perspectives. With its lyrical prose, his  haunting rendition of the stories offers contemporary readers a version both personal and universal in its appeal." —Phyllis Granoff

From the Publisher