A 1935 novel by E.R. Eddison, the first part of his unfinished Zimiamvian Trilogy, and a sort of, kind of, quasi-sequel to The Worm Ouroboros, almost. It is assuredly one of the strangest, trickiest and most unique books ever written, dense with classical and Elizabethan allusions; confusion reigns about the plot, so here, as a public service, is a synopsis of the setup:
The narrator of The Worm Ouroboros is one Lessingham, who sees that story in a dream induced by opium/a bird/a magic room; in this book's introduction, Lessingham dies at the age of 90. We learn from the introduction's narrator that his wife and daughter died in a train crash fiftyish years previously, and since then Lessingham himself has basically gone apeshit, ultimately invading some Norwegian islands; we (but not the narrator) understand that he's developed a highly idiosyncratic religious conviction on which he's been acting for the last five decades. Basically, in the Worm, Zimiamvia is the afterlife of the planet Mercury; to this afterlife are admitted valiant men and beautiful women. Lessingham reasons that his wife must consequently be there, and thus devotes himself monomaniacally to also earning entry, to see her again.
Which is obviously crazy, except it turns out Lessingham was right, and the actual novel takes place in Zimiamvia, where Lessingham, young again, is a nobleman and warlord in a vague not-quite-renaissance period — naturally, the eternal reward for brave men and fair women is a warlike, romantic paradise that Froissart and Patton would have understood. When we join the plot, he remembers nothing of his former life, and only unwittingly begins to recover his wife. But it's still the afterlife, so shit gets incredibly metaphysical almost immediately, and...
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