First published in 1994, the Lexicon Urthus provides an invaluable guide to the meaning of many of the obscure words which Gene Wolfe uses in The Book of the New Sun and The Urth of the New Sun. It lists all the characters in those works and in Wolfe’s short stories set on Urth, explaining who they are and exploring the origins and significance of their names. Place names are similarly recorded and illuminated. And as if that were not enough, the Lexicon also includes a series of fascinating articles about the organisation and history of Severian’s world and comes with a foreword written by Gene Wolfe himself.
The original edition of the Lexicon Urthus has long been out of print, but now author Michael Andre-Driussi has reissued it in a new updated and expanded edition with many additional entries and articles. (The first edition came to 297 pages, the second weighs in at 439.) Published under his own Sirius Fiction imprint, the Lexicon Urthus, second edition is available in both hard- and paperback editions and can be bought directly from the author’s website, from Amazon and from nearly all good booksellers.
[Ultan’s Amazon UK affiliate links (for European readers): It is available via Amazon.co.uk in a hardback and paperback edition. It’s not showing as available to order in those links, but it does come in and out of stock, and you can buy it from the bookdepository via Amazon, and they are very reliable.]