Jostling through the light and shadow of Malacia's streets goes a crowd of people: dukes, wealthy merchants, bankrupt families, actresses, priests, courtesans, spongers, soldiers, and down-at-heel showmen. They are seen through the eyes of Perian di Chirolo, actor and man-about-town, whose adventures take him through all strata of Malacian society and into the heart of its darkest secrets, lay and spiritual. Episodes idyllic and chilling follow each other in comic succession.

In this deeply divided world of pageant and squalor, de Chirolo slays a ferocious ancestral monster and seeks the hand — and somewhat more than the hand — of Armida Iloytola, daughter of a social climber. While he roisters with his friends or indulges in the acting which is so much a part of his life, nemesis is creeping up on him in its underhand way. Behind the drama stands the attractive enigma of Malacia itself. An age-old city-state where change is forbidden, lingering under the spell of its magicians, Malacia is riddled with rival philosophies where scholars hold that humanity is descended from dinosaurs. Malacia may exist on an alternate world to ours. Or it may be its creeds that set it apart.

This atmospheric novel, illustrated with drawings by the eighteenth-century painters G. B. Tiepolo, and Francesco Maggiotto, sets out in dramatic form many of the conflicts and contradictions of our own day and is the most excitingly original story yet told by an author of incomparable vitality and imagination.