The Mystery of Kama
and
Brahma’s Courtesans
Jane de La Vaudère
Translated by Brian Stableford
Presented here for the first time in English, in a superb translation by Brian Stableford, are The Mystery of Kama and Brahma’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.
About the Author
Jane de La Vaudère was baptized Jeanne Scrive and was married to Camille Gaston Crapez, who began styling himself Crapez de La Vaudère after inheriting the Château de La Vaudère from his mother. Her prolific literary work is very various but she was assimilated to the Decadent Movement firstly because of two scandalously scabrous Parisian novels, Les Demi-Sexes (1897) and Les Androgynes (1903), and, more pertinently, because of a series of accounts of moeurs antiques, some of which—notably Le Mystère de Kama (1901)—set new standards of excess.
Paperback, 326 pages
Release Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN-13: 978-1-94381-393-3
Price: US$24.50
Hardcover, 328 pages. Limited edition of 70 copies
Release Date: June 25, 2019
Price: US$37.00
Other books by Jane de La Vaudère :
Syta’s Harem and Pharaoh’s Lover
The Demi-Sexes and The Androgynes
The Double Star and Other Occult Fantasies
The Witch of Ecbatana and The Virgin of Israel
Three Flowers and the King of Siam’s Amazon