Indole alkaloids constitute an important class of natural products which include a large number of pharmacologically important substances such as the anti-tumour alkaloids, vinblastine and vincristine, the blood pressure lowering substance reserpine, the hallucinatory lysergic acid and its derivatives, and the cardio-arrhythmic alkaloid, ajmalicine. This important field has attracted the leading synthetic organic chemists of the present century to develop synthetic approaches to the challenging structural architecture encountered in many indole alkaloids. The book describes the syntheses of various types of indole alkaloids.