The Decadent Traveller

Prodigal sons Medlar Lucan and Durian Gray (coauthors of The Decadent Cookbook) resurface with The Decadent Traveller. In the late-19th-century regalia and spirit of aesthetes and decadents, the erstwhile restaurateurs underwent the rigors of exile (after being chased from Edinburgh by creditors and the authorities), ""seeking out degradation and debauchery"" in extravagant underworlds. With self-indulgence as their modus operandi, they didn't always satisfy their own expectations, and while pleasing themselves and others immensely at times, they ultimately experienced travel as ""a kind of hell in the crucible of the Decadent imagination."" Culinary, sexual and sensory misadventures in St. Petersburg, Cairo, Tokyo and elsewhere (in their introduction, editors Alex Martin and Jerome Fletcher allow that ""[t]hese may be elaborate fictions"") will delight fans of this pseudonymous duo. (Mar.)