VINTAGE CLASSICS · The existential novella readers can't stop talking about · Indian subcontinent edition
Soren Johansson has always believed he will be reunited with his loved ones after death in an eternal hereafter. Then he dies.
An ordinary family man, geologist and Mormon, Soren wakes to find himself cast by a God he has never heard of into a Hell whose dimensions he can barely grasp: a vast library he can leave only by finding the one book that contains the story of his life. Along its seemingly infinite shelves lies every possible combination of letters. Trapped in that maze of meaninglessness, he comes face to face with the absurdity of existence.
Steven L. Peck's modern classic, first published in 2009, takes a subversive vision of eternity and walks the reader through an afterlife in which everything everyone believed turns out to be wrong. For readers of Piranesi and I Who Have Never Known Men. Ethan Hawke called it a short stay in literary paradise.
About the author
Steven L. Peck is a Professor of Biology, widely published in evolutionary ecology and the philosophy of biology, and currently studying the soundscape ecology of birds and insects. He is also an award-winning novelist, essayist and poet, the author of six novels and two books of poetry. He grew up in the red-rock country around Moab, Utah.
Edition details
- Vintage Classics paperback, 112 pages
- For sale in the Indian subcontinent only
- This edition published 21 May 2026 (first published 2009)
