Goddess of death

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Goddess of Death (also Song of Kali ) is a horror novel by the American writer Dan Simmons . The original edition was published in 1985 under the title Song of Kali . The novel is about a writer who travels to Calcutta and experiences mysterious events there that are related to a sect that pays homage to the goddess Kali .

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Robert Luczak, an American writer and editor of a literary journal specializing in Eastern poetry, is due to travel to Calcutta , India, to acquire a new, previously unpublished manuscript by the famous poet M. Dash . Dash disappeared without a trace eight years earlier and has been considered dead by literary scholars ever since. For this reason, Luczak travels to Calcutta with great skepticism. His wife Amrita, who was born in India, accompanies him as a potential interpreter due to her language skills, together with their seven-month-old daughter Victoria.

Arriving in Calcutta, the Luczak family is received by MT Krishna, who claims to stand in for a friend of the writers' association who was unable to work. The next day, Luczak meets with the Writers' Union to discuss the details of handing over the manuscript. His request to meet Dash in person is vehemently denied. At this point, Luczak is ready to leave Calcutta immediately after receiving the manuscript. On the evening before his departure, however, Krishna returns and takes him to a café, where the student Jayaprakesh Muktanandaji tells him about his experiences with the sect of the Kapalikas, who worship Kali, a Hindu deity of death and destruction.

He says that the kapalika as a rite of passage of each new member calling for the sacrifice of a human cadaver before the statue of Kali in the temple of kapalika. During the ceremony, this corpse is resurrected by Kali. It turns out that the body that Muktanandaji stole from a crematorium is the body of M. Dash. Luczak, however, thinks the story is made up.

Soon afterwards, the new manuscript from Dash is leaked to Luczak, which turns out to be a poem of several hundred pages in which the goddess Kali is conjured up. The night after reading the text, Luczak has a nightmare in which Kali appears to him.

Luczak demands another meeting with Dash and threatens not to publish the manuscript if he is not allowed to see the poet. The Writers' Union then arranged a meeting in an unused factory in the middle of the slums of Calcutta. It turns out that Dash has had leprosy for many years and can only stay in the dark. However, he has read publications by Luczak and other contemporary English writers and asks Luczak to get him more works. Based on a poem that Dash mentions, Luczak believes that the poet would like to die - also because a pistol was leaked to Luczak shortly beforehand.

He gets the books and hollowed out one of them enough to fit the pistol. So he smuggles them into Dash's hiding place, which is guarded by Kapalikas. Shortly after Luczak has left Dash's room, two shots are heard and the poet is apparently dead on the table. Thereupon Luczak is captured and is supposed to be killed. However, he is freed by MT Krishna, who suddenly shows up, and is able to escape through the slums during a chase.

Back at the hotel, he learns that his daughter Victoria has been kidnapped from the hotel room. Everything points to the Kapalikas or MT Krishna. For a few days the Kolkata police found no results, then the family was told that the baby had been seen with a young Indian couple at the airport. Luczak, his wife and the police rush there, but are horrified to discover that Victoria has been dead for a few hours and was kidnapped not by the Kapalikas as expected, but by diamond smugglers who wanted to use the baby's body as a transport container.

After all the formalities in India have been dealt with, Luczak travels back to the United States with his wife and destroys the manuscript that tells of the resurrection of Kali. Even his move to a quiet area of ​​the USA only gives him partial peace. When he thinks he can start a new life and have slowly processed his heavy memories from Calcutta, he learns of the publication of Dash's Kali song in India. M. Dash seems to be alive after all. Spontaneously he travels to Calcutta with a pistol to kill his tormentors and put an end to the cult.

When he arrived in India, he saw the extent of the resurrection of Kali. He hears the song of the goddess in his ears and decides at the airport to give up his revenge, since he would only act in the interests of Kali and alone cannot do anything anyway. Back in the USA, he takes care of his relationship with his wife Amrita, takes over the editor-in-chief of the magazine Other Voices and tries to counter the dawning age of Kali by publishing positive literature.

main characters

  • Robert Luczak , writer and editor of the literary magazine Other Voices
  • Amrita Luczak , his wife, born in India
  • MT Krishna , an enigmatic figure whose true identity remains unclear
  • Michael Leonard Chatterjee , member of the Kolkata Writers' Union
  • M. Dash , lost poet and declared dead
  • Abe Bronstein , old friend of Robert Luczak and editor-in-chief of Other Voices magazine

Awards

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literature