The Thread of Flame (Classic Reprint) - Hardcover

Basil King

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0484800353 ISBN 13: 9780484800358

Publisher: Forgotten Books, 2020

Synopsis

A man wakes aboard a ship with no memory of who he is, facing a strange crew and a world that won’t tell him the truth.

The clock is ticking as clues drift with the salt wind.

On a working voyage across the ocean, an amnesiac narrator tries to piece together his past while navigating a bustling, peculiar world of porters, salesmen, and a mysterious figure known as the Floater. With memory fragment by fragment, he discovers how much his present life depends on a name he cannot recall and a past that may redefine everything he believes about himself.

As the voyage unfolds, the delicate line between honesty and self-deception, loyalty and ambition, pulls the book's characters into a tense, evolving chess game set aboard a crowded ship and in a bustling warehouse. The premise centers on identity, survival, and the uneasy mercy we grant to strangers—and to ourselves—as memory struggles to catch up with circumstance.

• Encounter a shipboard world where labor, hierarchy, and rumor mix with personal struggle.
• Follow a man’s attempt to rebuild his story from scattered memories and fresh clues.
• Meet a cast of vivid locals who shape the course of the voyage and the narrator’s fate.
• Explore themes of memory, self-knowledge, and the cost of truth in a tightly wound mystery.

Ideal for readers who enjoy atmospheric early-20th-century fiction with a suspenseful premise and a focus on character discovery.

Edition details

• Publisher: Forgotten Books
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0484800353
• ISBN 13: 9780484800358
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 372