City of saints and madmen / Jeff VanderMeer ; introduction by Michael Moorcock.

The book of Ambergris. The real VanderMeer : introduction /by Michael Moorcock -- Dradin, in love -- The Hoegbotton guide to the early history of Ambergris -- The transformation of Martin Lake -- The strange case of X -- Appendix. A letter from Dr. V to Dr. Simpkin -- X's notes -- The release of Belacqua -- King Squid -- The Hoegbotton family history -- The cage -- In the hours after death -- A note from Dr. V to Dr. Simpkin -- The man who had no eyes (encrypted) -- The exchange -- Learning to leave the flesh -- The Ambergris glossary.

In City of Saints and Madmen, Jeff VanderMeer has reinvented the literature of the fantastic. This is an invitation to a place unlike any you've ever visited - an invitation delivered by one of our most audacious and astonishing literary magicians. City of elegance and squalor. Of religious fervor and wanton lusts. And everywhere, on the walls of courtyards and churches, an incandescent fungus of mysterious and ominous origin. In Ambergris, a would-be suitor discovers that a sunlit street can become a killing ground in the blink of an eye. An artist receives an invitation to a beheading - and finds himself enchanted. And a patient in a mental institution is convinced he's made up a city called Ambergris, imagined its every last detail, and that he's really from a place called Chicago... By turns sensuous and terrifying, filled with exotica and eroticism, this interwoven collection of stories, histories, and "eyewitness" reports invokes a universe within a puzzlebox where you can lose - and find - yourself again. --publisher's description.