In the wake of the breakout successes of Walter Moers’ 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear, Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures, andThe City of Dreaming Books, Moers is back with this fourth book, the tumultuous tale of a little boy and his encounter with Death. Moers bases his utterly delightful story on twenty-one woodcuts by the inimitable Gustave Doré, the most successful illustrator of the nineteenth century.

In a world between legend and dream, A Wild Ride through the Night describes the exhilarating and comic adventures of twelve-year-old Gustave, a boy who aspires to one day be a great artist. When a disaster at sea puts Gustave in the uncompromising hands of Death, he has the choice to give up the ghost or take on a series of six impossible tasks. Gustave embarks on a strange and perilous journey during which he must save a princess from an angry dragon, pull a tooth from the Most Monstrous of All Monsters, fly over the moon, and even, somehow, meet his own self. Will Gustave’s creativity and imagination be able to save him from his fate?

Set in the land of Zamonia, this exuberant, highly original fantasy from Walter Moers features an unlikely hero. Rumo is a little Wolperting—a domesticated creature somewhere between a deer and a dog—who will one day become the greatest hero in the history of Zamonia. Armed with Dandelion, his talking sword, he fights his way through the Overworld and the Netherworld. He meets Rala, a beautiful Wolperting female; Urs of the Snows, who thinks more of cooking than of fighting; Gornab the Ninety-Ninth, the demented king of Netherworld; Professor Ostafan Kolibri, who goes in search of the Non-Existent Teenies; Professor Abdullah Nightingale, inventor of the chest-of-drawers oracle; and, worst luck, the deadly Metal Maiden.

Astonishingly inventive, amusing, and engrossing, Rumo is a captivating story from the unique imagination of Walter Moers. Filled with humor, this novel puts a new spin on the usual epic fantasy. The comparisons are many—Douglas Adams, Lewis Carroll, J. K. Rowling, Dr. Seuss, and R. Crumb—but Moers is clearly an original. Long live Zamonia!

Captain Bluebear is a bear with blue fur, a creature as unique as the fantastic adventures he undergoes. Unlike cats, which have only nine lives, bluebears have twenty-seven. This is fortunate, because our hero is forever avoiding disaster by a paw’s breadth.

In this remarkable book, Captain Bluebear tells the story of his first thirteen-and-a-half lives spent on the mysterious continent of Zamonia, where intelligence is an infectious disease and water flows uphill, where headless giants roam deserts made of sugar, and where only Captain Bluebear’s courage and ingenuity enable him to escape the dangers that lie in wait for him around every corner. In company with our indomitable hero, we enter a realm of the imagination that combines the fantasy of The Lord of the Rings and The Neverending Story with the humour of Baron Munchausen, and where anything can exist except boredom. It’s a land of imaginative lunacy and supreme adventure, wicked satire and epic fantasy, all mixed together and turned on its head.

Playful enough for young adult readers yet as intricate and engaging as any work of literary fiction, The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear has the plot of a novel and the spontaneity and humor of a vintage comic book, making it an instant international cult classic.

Malaisea, the unhealthiest town in the whole of Zamonia, is home to Echo the Crat, a multitalented creature resembling a cat in appearance but capable of speaking any language under the sun, human or animal. When his mistress dies, Echo finds himself out on the street. Dying of starvation, he is compelled to sign a contract with Ghoolion the Alchemaster, Malaisea’s evil alchemist-in-chief. This fateful document gives Ghoolion the right to kill Echo at the next full moon and render him down for his fat, with which he hopes to brew an alchemical concoction that will make him immortal. In return, he promises to regale the little Crat with the most exquisite gastronomic delicacies until his time is up. But Ghoolion has reckoned without Echo’s talent for survival and his ability to make new friends. These include the Leathermice, the Cogitating Eggs, the Golden Squirrel, the Cooked Ghost, Theodore T. Theodore the one-eyed Tuwituwu, and above all, Izanuela Anazazi, the last Uggly in Malaisea.

Walter Moers’ magnificent translation of Optimus Yarnspinner’s novel introduces us to yet another of Zamonia’s hotbeds of adventure: Malaisea, a place where sick is healthy, up is down, right is wrong, and Ghoolion the Alchemaster reigns supreme—until Echo crosses his path.

Following The 13+C/ Lives of Captain Bluebear and Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures comes a third hilarious and beloved Zamonia book, the most popular yet. It is a fantastic tale for every book lover.

Optimus Yarnspinner inherits from his godfather an unpublished manuscript by an unknown writer and sets off to track down the mysterious author, who disappeared into Bookholm–the so-called City of Dreaming Books. Yarnspinner falls under the spell of this book-obsessed metropolis, where an avid reader and budding author can find any number of charming attractions: priceless signed first editions, salivating literary agents, and for-hire critics. But as Yarnspinner pursues the trail of the missing author, the darker side of Bookholm begins to unveil itself–cold-blooded book hunters, cyclopean Fearsome Booklings, sharp-toothed Animatomes, and of course, the Shadow King, whose howls rise from deep beneath the city at night. Will Yarnspinner survive his quest into this world where reading is a genuine adventure?

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