Shriek

Widely regarded as one of the world's best fantasists, bestselling author Jeff VanderMeer's book-length fiction has been translated into fourteen languages, while his short fiction has appeared in several year's best anthologies and short-listed for "Best American Short Stories." His most recent books have made the year's best lists of "Publishers Weekly," "The San Francisco Chronicle," and "Los Angeles Weekly." He is also the recipient of an NEA-funded Florida Individual Artist Fellowship for excellence in fiction and a Florida Artist Enhancement Grant. A two-time winner of the World Fantasy Award, VanderMeer has also been a finalist for the Hugo Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, the International Horror Guild Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. In addition to his writing, VanderMeer has edited or co-edited several anthologies, including the critically acclaimed "Leviathan" fiction anthology series and "The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases." He now lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife, Ann.

An epic yet personal look at several decades of life, love, and death in the imaginary city of Ambergris--previously chronicled in Jeff VanderMeer's "City of Saints & Madmen"--"Shriek: An Afterword" relates the scandalous, heartbreaking, and horrifying secret history of two squabbling siblings and their confidantes, protectors, and enemies.
Narrated with flamboyant intensity and under increasingly urgent conditions by ex-society figure Janice Shriek, this afterword presents a vivid gallery of characters and events, emphasizing the adventures of Janice's brother Duncan, a historian obsessed with a doomed love affair and a secret that may kill or transform him; a war between rival publishing houses that will change Ambergris forever; and the gray caps, a marginalized people armed with advanced fungal technologies who have been waiting underground for their chance to mold the future of the city.

"Like some delicious, delirious mashup of H.P. Lovecraft, Mervyn Peake and L. Frank Baum, but with his own verbal dexterity and perverse ingenuity, VanderMeer's book is a dual autobiography . . . Looping back and forth through time, built of small intimate moments and large societal set-pieces (the wartime opera performance is positively Pynchonesque), this novel never allows its elaborate literary apparatus to muffle its affecting narrative about love, art, sibling rivalry, commerce, history and some really nasty 'shrooms."--Paul Di Filippo, "Washington"" Post
""Jeff VanderMeer's latest is as complicated, impressive and exasperating as anything he has written . . . VanderMeer makes no compromises with his readers, but "Shriek" is twisted, darkly funny and ultimately rewarding."--Jon Courtenay Grimwood, "The Guardian" (U.K.)
"With literary stylings, a complex, riveting plot, and ideas that lesser writers could not imagine, "Shriek: An Afterword "further establishes Jeff VanderMeer as the finest fantasist of his generation."--"The Austin Chronicle
""It is, in short, exactly the sort of book which ought to be in contention for major literary prizes--except that it is set in an imaginary city beset by malevolent fungus, and non-genre award panels tend to get scared of such books. In this case, such fears are misplaced; "Shriek" is a fantastic book, and a fantastical one. For lovers of the uncomfortable and slightly unhealthy work of a Will Self, or the fractured cityscapes of M. John Harrison, "Shriek" is a delight."--"Birmingham"" Post
""Five stars A stunning and very different fantasy novel from an author who should be turning heads in the 'serious' literary world. VanderMeer concerns himself with the life of a notorious historian whose investigations into a subterranean race known as 'grey caps' may hold the key to an ancient mystery. In reality, however, the book cleverly plays with the ways in which an author can manipulate an audience. But it's far less heavy and more entertaining than that makes it sound."--"BBC Focus" magazine
"VanderMeer's fantasy vision is a hallucinatory incantation not just of mushrooms but also of literature . . . It's not clear what obsesses Jeff VanderMeer more, mushrooms or books. Both appear on almost every page of his new novel, in which disgraced historian Duncan Shriek seeks to uncover the mystery of a race of mushroom people with mysterious fungal plans, who lurk below the surface of the moss-covered city of Ambergris. VanderMeer conjures a neo-Victorian city which is as much a character as anyone in the novel. It provides a perfectly decadent setting for its melancholic inhabitants, who are made more real, and sadder, by the impossible strangeness of their home."--Peter Bebergal, "The Believer" magazine
"VanderMeer explores brilliantly, penetratingly, the frail, evanescent inte