S.
(Book)

Includes 22 items purporting to be documents concerning the author, V. M. Straka, and his translator, F. X. Caldeira from the Straka Arkiv; decoding wheel, letters, post cards and notes by the readers, Jennifer and Eric; and other related materials.

Marginalia printed in various colors.

Title page and cover title: Ship of Theseus

V. M. Straka. Imprint on title page: Winged Shoes Press, New York, 1949. Title page and page [3] of cover printed with stamps of Laguna Verde High School Library; spine includes a Dewey call number label.

A young woman picks up a book left behind by a stranger. Inside it are his margin notes, which reveal a reader entranced by the story and by its mysterious author. She responds with notes of her own, leaving the book for the stranger, and so begins an unlikely conversation that plunges them both into the unknown. The book: Ship of Theseus, the final novel by a prolific but enigmatic writer named V.M. Straka, in which a man with no past is shanghaied onto a strange ship with a monstrous crew and launched onto a disorienting and perilous journey. The writer: Straka, the incendiary and secretive subject of one of the world's greatest mysteries, a revolutionary about whom the world knows nothing apart from the words he wrote and the rumors that swirl around him. The readers: Jennifer and Eric, a college senior and a disgraced grad student, both facing crucial decisions about who they are, who they might become, and how much they're willing to trust another person with their passions, hurts, and fears.--Slipcase.