Notes
Kingdoms of the Wall, a standalone novel by Robert Silverberg.

The image opposite and the blurb below are from the 1993 Grafton paperback edition, ISBN 0586211071. Cover illustration by Jim Burns.

Publisher's Blurb – Lower Cover
'This is the book of Poilar Crookleg, who has been to the roof of the World at the top of the Wall . . .'

Kosa Saag casts its tremendous shadow over half the world. It is the Wall, an immense and solitary mountain, dominating the lowland landscape of teeming humanity. Strange and bewildering gods live at the summit, on the roof of the world: the First Climber brought back the gift of fire from them, and the secrets of growing and hunting food.

Poilar Crookleg has the blood of the First Climber in his veins. His father was a Pilgrim, and his father before him – but thousands of years have passed since the time of He Who Climbed, and many thousands of Pilgrims have disappeared, as Poilar's father did, or died, or gone mad, following His footsteps to the summit. Poilar's journey, through dreamlike new realms of danger and seduction, in a diminishing company of other young Pilgrims, is an epic journey of discovery.

'Where Silverberg goes today, science fiction will follow tomorrow'
-ISAAC ASIMOV