The Society of Others

"He has nowhere to go. So he goes there."T o escape the pressures of family life and alienation from his contemporaries, the unnamed narrator of this existential novel heads out from home to hitchhike without destination. But his journey soon turns into an orgy of violence. A truck picks him up and soon we are at a checkpoint in some totalitarian European state riddled with terrorists. The driver hands the narrator a slip of paper and then tells him to jump — he does, just before the driver is shot and the truck is blown up, revealing its cargo of books.Thus begins a novel that is part spy story, part philosophical treatise — one that sweeps the reader along. Hypnotic, intellectually challenging, with all the pace and thrust of a thriller, The Society of Others introduces an important novelist with a long career ahead.From the Hardcover edition.