

An untitled vignette, printed on the dust jacket.All four novellas from the first edition were revised, and new material was added as an appendix to the book: The following year, a deluxe edition of City of Saints and Madmen appeared in hardcover format from Prime Books. It contained four novella-length pieces:ĭust jacket for the Prime Books edition, with art by Scott Eagle as well as a story. Considered a "proto-Ambergris story" by the author, "Learning to Leave the Flesh" wouldn't be included in the book until its 2004 edition.Ĭity of Saints and Madmen: The Book of Ambergris was first published in trade paperback format by Cosmos Books (an imprint of Wildside Press) in 2001. Although it does not reference the city directly, it mentions locations that would reappear in later work, such as Albumuth Boulevard and the River Moth. These creatures, though removed from the eccentricities of daily life in Ambergris, continue to cast a shadow over the city with their unexplained nocturnal activities.Īmbergris began in 1992 with "Learning to Leave the Flesh", a short story conceived for the Clarion writers' workshop at Michigan State University. The stories of City of Saints and Madmen are set in Ambergris, an urban sprawl named for " the most secret and valued part of the whale" and populated by humans after its original inhabitants-a race of mushroom-like humanoids known as "gray caps"-were violently driven underground. The setting was further explored in the novels Shriek: An Afterword (2006) and Finch (2009). City of Saints and Madmen: The Book of Ambergris is a collection of fantasy short stories by American writer Jeff VanderMeer, set in the fictional metropolis of Ambergris.
