When Derek Mahon's Selected Poems appeared in 1990 The New Yorker remarked on their 'astonishing excellence'. This long poem meditates on the idea of cultural decadence in its historical and contemporary manifestations: apocalyptic fears, sexual 'anarchy', the conflicting claims of art and nature.

Describing himself as 'a decadent who lived to tell the story' and 'a rueful veteran of the gender wars', the poet revisits London, Paris, New York, the Aegean and his native Ulster; dramatizes key aestheticians like Schopenhauer and Wilde; and offers his own lyrical response to the closing century. The Yellow Book is a work of remarkable depth and scope by one of the finest poets of the age.