The Thread of Flame (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Basil King

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9781331087564: The Thread of Flame (Classic Reprint)

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.

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About the Author

Basil King, a prolific, widely collected painter and a writer, first went to Black Mountain at 16. His paintings are in many public and private collections, including Yale University and the New York Public Library.

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