The twenty-five tales included in this book constitute one of the oldest collections of stories in the world, a book that offers both a set of uncanny, unsettling, and unforgettable narratives and a profound meditation on what weird thing it is that drives us to tell and to listen to stories. “Tales of the Vetala” is one of the names under which these stories have made their way from ancient India to the world at large, a Vetala being a corpse-spirit, and the frame story to the collection as a whole tells of a young king who bears the burden of a double spell. He has fallen under the power of a sorcerer, whose demand is that he fetch to him a Vetala to be his servant, and he has fallen under the power of the Vetala itself. Within this framework, this book unfolds a suite of tales of suicidal passion, clever deceit, patriarchal oppression, obligatory self-sacrifice, changing bodies, and narrow escapes from death.