The City of Dreaming Books

Table of Contents

 

 

ALSO BY WALTER MOERS

The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear
A Wild Ride Through the Night
Rumo

Published by Harvill Secker, 2006

Copyright © Piper Verlag GmbH, München 2004 Translation copyright © John Brownjohn, 2006

Walter Moers has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

First published in Great Britain in 2006 by HARVILL SECKER

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The publication of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut

eISBN : 978-1-590-20368-2

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Typeset in Stempel Garamond by SX Composing DTP, Rayleigh, Essex Printed and bound in Great Britain by William Clowes Ltd, Beccles, Suffolk

T
his is where my story begins. It tells how I came into possession of
The Bloody Book
and acquired the Orm. It’s not a story for people with thin skins and weak nerves, whom I would advise to replace this book on the pile at once and slink off to the children’s section. Shoo! Begone, you cry-babies and quaffers of camomile tea, you wimps and softies! This book tells of a place where reading is still a genuine adventure, and by adventure I mean the old-fashioned definition of the word that appears in the
Zamonian Dictionary
: ‘
A daring enterprise undertaken in a spirit of curiosity or temerity, it is potentially life-threatening, harbours unforeseeable dangers and sometimes proves fatal.
’

Yes, I speak of a place where reading can drive people insane. Where books may injure and poison them - indeed, even kill them. Only those who are thoroughly prepared to take such risks in order to read this book - only those willing to hazard their lives in so doing - should accompany me to the next paragraph. The remainder I congratulate on their wise but yellow-bellied decision to stay behind. Farewell, you cowards! I wish you a long and boring life, and, on that note, bid you goodbye!

So . . . Having probably reduced my readers to a tiny band of reckless souls at the very outset, I should like to bid the rest of you a hearty welcome. Greetings, my intrepid friends, you’re cut from the cloth of which true adventurers are made! Let us waste no more time and set out at once on our journey. For it is a journey on which we’re embarking, a journey to Bookholm, the City of Dreaming Books. Tie your shoelaces good and tight, because our route will take us first across a vast expanse of rugged, stony terrain, then across a monotonous stretch of prairie where the grass is dense, waist-high and razor-sharp, and finally - along gloomy, labyrinthine, perilous passages - deep into the bowels of the earth. I cannot predict how many of us will return. I can only urge you never to lose heart whatever befalls us.

 

And don’t say I didn’t warn you!

I
n western Zamonia, when you’ve traversed the Dullsgard Plateau in an easterly direction and finally left its rippling expanses of grassland behind you, the skyline suddenly recedes in a dramatic way. You can look far, far out across the boundless plain to where, in the distance, it merges with the Demerara Desert. If the weather is fine and the atmosphere clear, you will be able to discern a speck amid the sparse vegetation of this arid wasteland. As you advance, so it will grow larger, take on jagged outlines, sprout gabled roofs and eventually reveal itself to be the legendary city that bears the name of Bookholm.