Recently voted the greatest fantasy of all time, after The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun is an extraordinary epic, set a million years in the future, on an Earth transformed in mysterious and wondrous ways, in a time when our present culture is no longer even a memory. Severian, the central character, is a torturer, exiled from his guild after falling in love with one of his victims, and journeying to the distant city of Thrax, armed with his ancient executioner's sword, Terminus Est.
This edition contains the first two volumes of this four volume novel, The Shadow of the Torturer and The Claw of the Conciliator.
Accolades
Nebula Award Winner 1982 (The Claw of the Conciliator)
World Fantasy Award Winner 1981 (The Shadow of the Torturer)
BSFA Award Winner 1982 (The Shadow of the Torturer)
Locus Award Winner 1982 (The Claw of the Conciliator)
Reviews
'The first two volumes of one of the greatest novels ever written' Kim Stanley Robinson
'One of the great science fantasy epics of all time' George R.R. Martin
"Magic stuff…a masterpiece…the best science fiction I've read in years!" --Ursula K. Le Guin
"one of the most ambitious works of speculative fiction in the twentieth century" The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
"Arguably the best piece of literature American science fiction has yet produced." --Chicago Sun-Times"
"The Book of the New Sun establishes his preeminence, pure and simple. . . . The Book of the New Sun contains elements of Spenserian allegory, Swiftian satire, Dickensian social consciousness and Wagnerian mythology. Wolfe creates a truly alien social order that the reader comes to experience from within . . . once into it, there is no stopping."--The New York Times Book Review
"a masterpiece of science fantasy comparable in importance to the major works of Tolkien and Lewis" Publishers Weekly
Author Biography
Gene Wolfe has been called "the finest writer the science fiction world has yet produced" by The Washington Post. A former engineer, he has written numerous books and won a variety of awards for his SF writing. He lives with his wife Rosemary in Barrington, Illinois.
