Shadow of the Torturer & Claw of the Conciliator make up the first half of The Book of the New Sun. 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 in a time when our present culture is no longer even a memory.
Severian is a torturer, born into the Guild of the Seekers for Truth & Penitence and with an exceptionally promising career ahead of him …until he falls in love with one of his clients, a beautiful young noblewoman. Out of love, Severian helps her commit suicide and escape her fate – no more unforgivable act for a torturer.
He is exiled from the guild and his home city to a distant metropolis with little more than his executioner sword to his name. Along the way he has to learn to survive in a wider world without the guild – a world in which he has already made both allies and enemies. Welcome to a world in which nothing is quite as it seems; to an unreliable narrator; to extraordinary, vivid and evocative writing; to one of the greatest genre classics of all time.
Please note
Two different editions are available from Amazon.co.uk.
The first contains all four parts of The Book of the New Sun series but has quite small print.https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/518VDVCzT-L.SL180.jpg
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While the second contains only Shadow of the Torturer & Claw of the Conciliator but has a truly awful cover.”>https://photos3.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/9/b/c/e/global_15159886.jpeg
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Language in the books
The Book of the New Sun has been widely analysed for its deeper meanings; some of these analyses have been published, such as Michael Andre-Druissi’s Lexicon Urthus (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0964279517?tag=wimbbookclub-21&camp=2902&creative=19466&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=0964279517&adid=0VH6K01GGR80T9WNBP6V&) and Robert Borski’s Solar Labyrinth (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0595317294?tag=wimbbookclub-21&camp=2902&creative=19466&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=0595317294&adid=1A3YYK31Q1FE4MEBF4CH&). Wolfe makes extensive use of allegory within the series, as Severian is identified as a Christ/Apollo figure: he is destined to revitalize the Sun while at the same time destroying it. Adding further to the books’ many riddles is Wolfe’s usage of archaic, obscure (but never invented) words to describe the world of the far future. Wolfe explains that this is one of the difficulties in translating Severian’s writing into English. An example can be found in Severian’s fuligin cloak (“the colour that is darker than black”), probably derived from fuliginous, an obscure and archaic word meaning sooty. Other examples are optimates, named for a political party in Republican Rome, aquastor, a spiritual being that appears in the works of Paracelsus, and fiacre, a small carriage (which is, in fact, a French word with that meaning).