City of Saints & Madmen [Paperback]

Beautifully written, virtually hallucinatory work. Connoisseurs of the finest in postmodern fantasy will find it enormously rewarding.

A masterful novel. Complex and textured, decadent and decaying. A beautiful work of art, both as physical object and text.

It is a rare treasure, to be tasted with both relish and respect. It's what you've been looking for.

[a] truly wonderful creation...startlingly nasty and/or beautiful revelations.

The most complete updated edition of this fantastical excursion to an imaginary city

Once upon a time, on the banks of the River Moth, a city sprang up like no other in or out of history. Founded on the blood of the original inhabitants after the defeat of the stealthy grey caps, and steeped for centuries in the aftermath of that struggle, Ambergris has become a cruelly beautiful metropolis -- a haven for artists and thieves, for composers and murderers. For anyone privileged to venture there, the name Ambergris conjures up one of the great and unforgettably fantastic cities of contemporary literature. Readers worldwide have become increasingly beguiled by Jeff VanderMeer's strange and ancient metropolis. And for those who have once visited this uniquely complex and comprehensive society, it will remain forever a favourite haunt -- a bustling, grotesque, magnificent, brilliantly realized community full of shocking and beautiful revelations. City of Saints & Madmen collects all of the Ambergris novellas (including the World Fantasy Award winner 'The Transformation of Martin Lake').

For anyone privileged to venture there, the name Ambergris conjures up one of the great and unforgettably fantastic cities of contemporary literature. Readers worldwide have been seduced by Jeff VanderMeer's strange metropolis. Once you have visited this uniquely complex and mysterious society, it will remain forever a favourite haunt--a bustling, grotesque, magnificent, brilliantly-realized setting, full of shocking and beautiful revelations. Sumptuously designed and stunningly written, it is destined to become a classic. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

City of Saints and Madmen represents the culmination of over 10 years of writing for me. It's not just the culmination of my work, though--it's also the culmination of work by the seven artists and two designers who helped craft the look-and-feel of the book. The book is perhaps unique in the way in which it incorporates art and illustration in the service of the narrative. But more than anything, City of Saints and Madmen is a fun book! I had fun writing it, and I think readers will have fun exploring it. It is dark and ominous in places, but it's also full of unexpected humor. I hope readers enjoy it. (I'll be in the UK at EasterCon in April 2004, as well as doing Borders London and Forbidden Planet London and Ottakars Coventry readings. I hope to meet many of my readers at these events.) - Jeff VanderMeer

Jeff VanderMeer, winner of the World Fantasy Award, has seen his fiction published in over twenty different countries. In 2001 he was named by Locus, the leading trade SF/Fantasy magazine, as one of the top ten writers of fantasy short fiction in the world.