The Land Across by Gene Wolfe, 286 pages
As
our narrator, a travel writer, is exploring a fictional Eastern
European country, he is arrested and his passport taken. He is
imprisoned at the home of a local man, required to spend his nights
there but free to wander during the day, much to the displeasure of his
host and the pleasure of his host's seductive wife. In short order, he
encounters treasure hunters, a revolutionary group, the secret police,
an occult conspiracy, and a man in black who may or may not be Dracula.
Although Wolfe is best known as a science fiction and fantasy author (Book of the New Sun), this comic thriller showcases his versatility as the
protagonist blunders through a strange land of restless souls and
murderous disembodied hands. Alternately hilarious, confusing, and
creepy, this book is certainly never boring.
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