When poet Lucius Galloway is offered a prestigious position translating a mysterious ancient text at Harvard University, he is thrust into an unimagined world of esoteric knowledge, mystical symbols and sanity-shattering nightmares. But Lucius has no idea that his visionary anthology, The Drowned City, has revealed him to be one of the eldritch-touched, and brought him to the attention of the mysterious Abdul Alhazred, whose schemes are even now ensnaring the unwitting scholar. Haunted by dreams of horrors lurking beneath the waves, Lucius must do everything in his power to solve the mystery at the heart of the translation before the hidden figures dogging his footsteps catch up to him and their ominous machinations transform the world forever.