Eric Sanderson is jolted awake one morning to discover that he does not know who he is or where he is. All that he has to cling to is a series of letters and packages—which he is warned not to open—signed “with regret and hope” from the First Eric Sanderson. Attacked in his own home by a force he cannot see and memories he cannot ignore—including those of a perfect love now lost—Eric tears open the parcels and discovers he is being relentlessly pursued by a shark that may exist only in his mind, but which stalks him through the flows and streams of language and human interaction. Hunting the answers as he is hunted, Eric is led on a journey that will either bring the First Eric Sanderson back to life or destroy both Eric Sandersons forever.
A daring and unique novel that confronts readers with literary hieroglyphs as well as an intensely original story,
The Raw Shark Texts plumbs the depths and dangers of language, the fluidity of memory and the bittersweet ripples of loss.The Ludovician fish is a predator, a shark. It feeds on human memories and the intrinsic sense of self. Ludovicians are solitary, fiercely territorial and methodical hunters. A Ludovician might select an individual human being as its prey animal, and pursue and feed on that individual over the course of years, until that victim’s memory and identity have been completely consumed. Sometimes, the target’s body survives this ordeal and may go on to live a second twilight life after the original self and memories have been taken. In time, such a person may establish a -bolt on’ identity of their own, but the Ludovician will eventually catch the scent of this and return to complete its kill.
—from the raw shark texts
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But don't just take our word for it. We asked Audrey Niffenegger, one of the most creative contemporary writers working today, to share with readers her take on Steven Hall's debut novel, The Raw Shark Texts. Check out her exclusive Amazon guest review below. --Brad Thomas Parsons
Guest Reviewer: Audrey Niffenegger
Audrey Niffenegger is a professor in the Interdisciplinary Books Arts MFA Program at the Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts. A visual artist, she shows her artwork at Printworks Gallery in Chicago. The Time Traveler's Wife, her first novel, was an international bestseller and was one of Amazon.com's Best Books of 2003. It won several awards and is being made into a major motion picture. Her visual novels, The Three Incestuous Sisters and The Adventuress, were recently published by Harry N. Abrams. Miss Niffenegger is currently hard at work on her second novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, a ghost story set in London's Highgate Cemetery.
Eric Sanderson has lost his memory, his girl, his life as he once knew it. His pre-amnesiac self is sending him letters, a sort of correspondence course on how to be Eric Sanderson. Unfortunately, this previous self didn't really have it all together either. This is too bad, because the source of all the trouble is a conceptual shark, a Ludovician shark, no less. Soon Eric is on the run, trying to piece it all together and find true love before his mind gets wiped by the shark for the twelfth and probably final time.
Steven Hall is an inventive, funny and extremely smart writer. I am a letterpress printer and a typophile, and I was drawn to his book because of the typography: The Raw Shark Texts is riddled with typographic games, codes, a flip book, and a boatload of very elegant plot devices that hinge on collisions between the Information Age and the imagination. At one point Eric and Scout, his guide/love interest, are speeding away from the conceptual shark on a motorbike. Scout eludes the shark by exploding a letter bomb, a bomb made out of old metal type; the type diverts the shark into a stream of random letterforms. At this I practically fell off the couch with admiration.
There's plenty to groove on in The Raw Sharks Texts even if you're not a type maven. There's echoes of Cyberpunk, Borges, Auster; there is adventure on the high seas, lost love, an exploration of what it means to be human in the age of intelligent machines. The Raw Sharks Texts is huge fun, and I gleefully recommend it. --Audrey Niffenegger
Steven Hall was born in 1975 in Derbyshire, England. He has produced a number of plays, music videos, concrete prose/conceptual art pieces and short stories, including “Stories for a Phone Book,” featured in New Writing 13. The film rights to The Raw Shark Texts have been optioned by Film Four in association with Blueprint Pictures and Pathé in the UK. Steven Hall lives in Hull, England.
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Seller Inventory # Abebooks16870