Five and Twenty Tales of the Genie

Half mythical, heroic and sagacious, the emperor Vikramaditya is widely regarded as India''s greatest monarch. This collection of stories tells of the ruler''s fabled encounter with a vetala, a genie who inhabits the body of a corpse. The emperor begs the spirit for his help against a mighty necromancer and is told in return twenty-four tales, each of which presents a situation he might face as a ...