City of Saints and Madmen

by Jeff VanderMeer

Paperback, 704 pages

English language

Published Dec. 18, 2008 by Bantam Books.

ISBN:: 978-0-553-38357-7
OCLC Number:: 61362178
ASIN:: 0553383574

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.

8 editions

Jenny Jaybles reviewed City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer

Long but enjoyable

5 stars

This is a very dense book but I found it humorous. It's clever and sarcastic and witty. There's some very interesting avant-garde writing styles going on here. It's a bunch of short stories but things to connect between the stories.