The poet Robert Luzak travels to Kolkata as an envoy of the American magazine Harper's to personally collect the latest epic work of the Indian poet M. Das - and primarily to meet the mysterious Das himself, who has been missing for the last 6-7 years and was believed to be dead. Up to this point, the only paradox is the unexpected reappearance of the lost poet. However, upon arriving in Kolkata, Luzak encounters many more paradoxes. Although his intuition warns him that something is not right, he has not realized that he is surrounded by the forces of evil, by human-like "gods and demons," whose motives, methods, and mindset his Western rationality fails to grasp...

"The Song of Goddess Kali" is not just another simplistic thriller-repetition of the cinematic cliché of the "civilized" Westerner getting caught up in adventures with the "natives" of a third-world country. It is the wounded and anguished cry of reason and humanity against the Absolute Evil, against the darkness that lurks within us.

In 1986, a year after its release, this book by the then-unknown Dan Simmons was honored with the prestigious World Fantasy Award. It was followed by 32 more books (including 4 collections of short stories and 3 novellas), 18 of which have won the Hugo, Bram Stoker, Locus, British Fantasy, and British Science Fiction Awards - and more is to come...