Maurice Druon.
 
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958. Octavo. Tan cloth boards with foxing to the top of the top block and on the right corner of the boards. Spine is bumped on the crown and the heel. Binding is tight and the text block is clean. Price clipped dust wrapper has a stain on the lower portion of the spine and chipping near the crown. Discolored on the top of the inner flaps. 254 pages. First American edition. Near fine in a very good jacket.
 
The fourth installment of Druon's Accursed Kings series, described by George R.R. Martin as "the original Game of Thrones." Since it was discovered to be source material for HBO's wildly popular sex and swords epic, the American first edition has become a ghost. The only Scribner's first currently for sale.
 
“Every man believes to some extent that the world began when he was born and, at the moment of leaving it, suffers at having to let the Universe remain unfinished.”