Whilst tidying up the cellar after pulling all the old computer and radio bits and pieces out to rebuild a Win XP PC I came across the above book Severian of The Guild by Gene Wolfe, it is the tetralogy of Shadow of the Torturer, Claw of the Conciliator, Sword of the Lictor and Citadel of the Autarch all in one book.
I read them as separate novels many, many years ago in the early 1980s, bits of it I can still remember though much of it is a bit hazy, and I never finished the last book, Citadel of the Autarch.
From memory it was quite a difficult read, Mr Wolfe is quite wordy, no use using a phrase when a chapter will do
and in reading the first 7 chapters of the first book I've had to refer to the dictionary quite a few times, it is challenging in it's use of archaic terms and such but so far so good
I picked up this all in one volume in 2007 to finish reading the tale but never got round to reading it until now, and I have just found out that there is a fifth book in the series now "Urth of the New Sun"
Set on an Earth (Urth) of the far future where Severian lives with his guild of torturers in an old disused spaceship and the world has a mixture of medieval and hi-tech with hints of aliens and other planets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_New_Sun https://www.amazon.co.uk/Severian-G...+the+guild&qid=1590358245&sr=8-1 Also available on Kindle
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shadow-Tor...+the+guild&qid=1590358752&sr=8-2