Martin Dressler is the son of a cigar maker, born in late 19th-century New York. As Martin approaches manhood, it is rapidly clear that his ambitions stretch far further than inheriting his father's shop, as he moves first to take a job in a hotel, then to open a restaurant, and rapidly ascends to become a builder of hotels of his own. He is a classic entrepreneur, a young man who has the audacity to make his dreams - and the American Dream - come true on the grandest possible scale. But when Martin sets out to build the Grand Cosmos, a hotel that rivals Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast in its scale, and aims to rival the world itself in its scope, this mesmerizing novel finally exposes the ambiguity of the American dream and the perils and wonder of human ambition and human imagination.