The Mystery of Kama and Brahma's Courtesans

Presented here for the first time in English, in a superb translation by Brian Stableford, are The Mystery of Kama and Brahama’s Courtesans, two outrageous, full-length novels from the pen of Jane de La Vaudère.

In this pair of India-set adventures, the eccentric author pulls out all the stops, filling the pages with garish eroticism and gruesome cruelty, telling two tales of extreme amour—of Love that embodies both the idea of Paradise and the idea of the Inferno. Replete with over-the-top exoticism, outlandish magic, and purely physical horror, these bizarre fantasies of sublime exaltation and ultimate torment are some of the most unusual documents of French literature.

The Mystery of Kama and Brahma’s Courtesans were ground-breaking in several ways, and remain startling even after a century in which the literary ground in question has been thoroughly and repeatedly plowed.