The History of Caliph Vathek

Caliph Vathek is the ninth caliph of the Abassid line, a man of vast intelligence and appetites, whose curiosity about forbidden knowledge leads him into a compact with an emissary of Eblis, the Islamic figure of ultimate darkness. William Beckford's 1786 Gothic novel follows Vathek's journey toward his promised reward through a landscape of supernatural wonders and grotesque punishments, ending in the Hall of Eblis, where those who have sold their souls discover exactly what immortality without peace costs.

Jonathan Keeble narrates this foundational Gothic text with the authority of someone familiar with both its historical importance and its genuine power as a story. His voice gives the Oriental tale's exotic architecture its proper balance of splendor and dread, and he handles the novel's ironic tone, Beckford's satirical distance from his own monstrous protagonist, without undercutting the genuine horror. The audiobook serves as both a literary artifact and a genuinely unsettling listening experience.