Amazon.com description: Product Description: Vathek is an Arabian tale with oriental setting, characters, oriental cultures. and myth. It is also a Gothic novel because of the supernatural, ghosts, spirits, and the terror it tries to induce on the reader. William Beckford was an English novelist, art critic, travel writer and politician. He was a Member of Parliament. The History of Caliph Vathek is his best known work. The novel Vathek (1786), written originally written in French and the author boasted it was written in a single sitting of three days and two nights. Vathek (alternatively titled Vathek, an Arabian Tale or The History of the Caliph Vathek) was written in 1787. During the 18th and early19th century all things Oriental fascinated the public. From Wikipedia, "The novel chronicles the fall from power of the Caliph Vathek (a fictionalized version of the historical Al-Wathiq), who renounces Islam and engages with his ally Nouronihar in a series of licentious and deplorable activities designed to gain him supernatural powers. At the end of the novel, instead of attaining these powers, Vathek descends into a hell ruled by the demon Eblis where he is doomed to wander endlessly and speechlessly. "