Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Nov 2013
288 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
An American writer of travel guides in need of a new location chooses to travel to a small and obscure Eastern European country. The moment Grafton crosses the border he is in trouble, much more than he could have imagined. His passport is taken by guards, and then he is detained for not having it. He is released into the custody of a family, but is again detained. It becomes evident that there are supernatural agencies at work, but they are not in some ways as threatening as the brute forces of bureaucracy and corruption in that country. Is our hero in fact a spy for the CIA? Or is he an innocent citizen caught in a Kafkaesque trap?
In The Land Across, Gene Wolfe keeps us guessing until the very end, and after.
"Starred Review. Wolfe evokes Kafka, Bradbury, and The Twilight Zone in combining the implausible, creepy, and culturally alien to create a world where every action is motivated by its own internal logic, driving the story forward through the unexplored and incomprehensible." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Wolfe, in masterful mood, builds his characters, explores the puzzles, links the elements together and contrives to render the backdrop both intriguingly attractive and creepily sinister. Sheer enjoyment." - Kirkus
"Mirroring the absurdist novels of Franz Kafka and the surreal stories of Stanislaw Lem and Jorge Luis Borges, Wolfe's latest novel begins quietly and grows stranger and more whimsical by the page. In the end, the author's creative genius brings everything together with twists and turns that are both surprising and immensely satisfying." - Library Journal
"A timely political message is wrapped up in this appropriately satirical and surreal parody." - Booklist
This information about The Land Across was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Among many other awards, Gene Wolfe is the winner of the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement. In 2007, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. He moved to Peoria, Illinois in 2013.
Name Pronunciation
Gene Wolfe: WOLF
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