A tale that is at once a fantastical historical mystery, a haunting love story, and a glimpse into the uncanny. Xeno Atlas grows up in the Bronx, his Sicilian grandmother's stories of animal spirits his only escape from the legacy of his mother's early death and his stern father's long absences. Shunted off to an isolated boarding school, Xeno turns his fascination with animals into a personal obsession: his search for the medieval Caravan Bestiary, lost for eight hundred years, which supposedly details the animals not granted passage on the Ark--griffins, hippogriffs, manticores, and basilisks--the vanished remnants of a lost world. Xeno's quest takes him from the tenements of New York to the jungles of Vietnam to the ancient libraries of Europe--but it is only by riddling out his own family secrets that he can hope to find what he is looking for.--From publisher description.