The poem begins in 'an ancient garden in the midnight city, ' where a nocturnal recollection of the past begins an epic voyage traversing centuries of ideas and continents of profound imagery. "The Basement Trains," Payne's greatest long poem, written when he was 28 years old, conjures up a wealth of poetic legacies: from Dante's visit to the underworld, to TS Eliot's 'Mind of Europe.' Here, one sees William Blake, Milton, the Catholic Bible, Greek and Roman myth, Russian folklore; and, beyond this, one hears the voice of Roman Payne in its purest poetic form. This bilingual first-edition...

"Cities & Countries is a book about travel, about searching and wandering, about finding greatness in the midst of the world." Strange adventures meet Alexis when he wanders far from his familiar home in a quest to become a man of the world. What begins as a search for the "Great City," leads to a wayward and whimsical, romantically poignant, and at times powerfully despairing, jaunt through various cities and countries, far and wide. Along the way, he meets soldiers and hunchbacks, criminals and revolutionaries, madmen and fishermen, goatherds and opium smokers, charlatans, fanatical holy...

A feast of sensuality, Payne's third epic novel narrates the story of the beautiful young Nadja, and her brooding lover Nikolai, as the two come of age in a springtime garden. When their world of earthly delights fades with the dying season, the two are exiled from their pastoral romance into a fiery world of seedy urban haunts, intoxicated dreams and electric lights. When tragedy heralds the birth of a new day, light is shed on everyone's fate as the greatest adventure of all begins: a cunning swindler sets off on a heroic voyage to find the love of his youth. Through tears of hope and...

A gothic mystery novel and story of passion and romance set against the backdrop of a timeless Mediterranean landscape, The Wanderess tells of the notorious adventurer Saul and his passion for the beautiful Saskia, a mysterious young orphan girl whom he meets and vows to protect as his child. When Saul's pursuit of pleasure and fortune gets tangled with the quest of this -Wanderess- for her long-lost friend and her own fortune, the two find themselves on a picaresque path that leads them through Spain, France, Italy and beyond; their adventures weaving them deeper and deeper into a web of...