The History of Caliph Vathek

Vathek is a Gothic novel written by William Thomas Beckford chronicles the fall from power of the Caliph Vathek who renounces Islam and engages with his mother Carathis 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.