Publishers Weekly
★ 06/19/2023
World Fantasy Award winner Tidhar (Neom) wows with a mind-bending existential adventure that seeks to answer the age-old question of why humanity exists. In 2001 London, four characters converge around the lost science fiction book Lode Stars, written decades earlier by Eugene Charles Hartley. It’s rumored that Hartley, who also founded the sketchy Church of God’s All-Seeing Eyes, discovered the “true nature of reality” and encoded it into the novel, which follows heroine Delia as she searches for her father. The novel also posits that humans are reconstructed memories swirling inside black holes, which are the eyes of God, and that alien “eaters” feed on these reconstituted humans. Only possession of Lode Stars itself can ward off this danger. Albino mathematician Delia Welegtabit, who happens to have the same name as Lode Star’s heroine, is drawn into the hunt for the book by her husband, obsessive mathematician Levi. When Levi disappears, Delia turns to Daniel Chase, a rare book collector, to investigate—but then Daniel is himself kidnapped by mobster Oskar Lens, who believes in the book’s power and wants it to protect him from the eaters. Toggling between perspectives and the ethereal text of Lode Stars, Tidhar’s slippery metafictional tale lyrically entangles scientific fact, mysticism, and mental illness. This is a knockout. Agent: John Berlyne, Zeno Literary. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
Guardian: Five of the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2023
Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2023
New Scientist 13 Best New Science Fiction Books of 2023
Literary Hub September’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books
Aurist October's Best-Written Recent Releases in SF/Fantasy/Horror
Foreword Book of the Day
Los Angeles Public Library: Best Fiction and Literature of 2023
Locus Recommended Reading List
Book and Film Globe Most Meta of 2023
Portalist Favorite Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of 2023
“Inventive, thought-provoking, audacious and, as ever with Tidhar, superbly readable, this is where his genius lies.”
—Guardian
[STARRED REVIEW] “World Fantasy Award winner Tidhar (Neom) wows with a mind-bending existential adventure that seeks to answer the age-old question of why humanity exists. In 2001 London, four characters converge around the lost science fiction book Lode Stars, written decades earlier by Eugene Charles Hartley. It’s rumored that Hartley, who also founded the sketchy Church of God’s All-Seeing Eyes, discovered the ‘true nature of reality’ and encoded it into the novel, which follows heroine Delia as she searches for her father. The novel also posits that humans are reconstructed memories swirling inside black holes, which are the eyes of God, and that alien ‘eaters’ feed on these reconstituted humans. Only possession of Lode Stars itself can ward off this danger. Albino mathematician Delia Welegtabit, who happens to have the same name as Lode Star’s heroine, is drawn into the hunt for the book by her husband, obsessive mathematician Levi. When Levi disappears, Delia turns to Daniel Chase, a rare book collector, to investigate—but then Daniel is himself kidnapped by mobster Oskar Lens, who believes in the book’s power and wants it to protect him from the eaters. Toggling between perspectives and the ethereal text of Lode Stars, Tidhar’s slippery metafictional tale lyrically entangles scientific fact, mysticism, and mental illness. This is a knockout.”
—Publishers Weekly
[STARRED REVIEW] “Inquisitive, daring, and rich with possibilities, The Circumference of the World is a speculative masterpiece.”
—Foreword
“Brilliant and bizarre, Lavie Tidhar’s The Circumference of the World is many things—but fundamentally it is a love letter to the Golden Age of science fiction.”
—Molly Tanzer, author of Vermilion and Creatures of Will and Temper
“The Circumference of the World is an ambitious and ambiguous book showing Tidhar at top form.”
—Chicago Review of Books
“Tidhar’s rich portrayal of the pulpy golden age of science fiction, distinctive characters, and nimble turns of phrase make for a cool confection.”
—Kirkus
“Longtime SF readers will easily spot the real-world parallels, but that doesn’t stop Tidhar from telling a compelling story of obsession and greed that will make readers think about the nature of reality. VERDICT Readers who fell hard into the metafiction of The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge or the you-are-there gossip of Astounding by Alec Nevala-Lee will likely be as obsessed with this book as the characters are with Lode Stars.”
—Library Journal
“Tidhar’s melancholy, beautiful and yet improbably light-touch narrative, meanwhile, is structured like a nesting doll.”
—New Scientist
“Ingeniously constructed and stylistically protean, this seven-course banquet of a novel glistens with the Golden Age of science fiction, even as it nourishes our neurons with a marvelous thought experiment.”
—James Morrow, award-winning author of Shambling Towards Hiroshima
“Tidhar wins it all with this magnificently original mind-bender of a novel about a missing husband and a mysterious book that disappears as soon as you read it. The Circumference of the World is two parts Philip K. Dick, two parts Brothers Strugatsky, and six parts blow your f**king mind.”
—Junot Díaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
“I always have been partial to dangerous books, and to fictions about dangerous books, and the one at the swirling center of this exhilarating tour de force is a doozy—just like every book by Lavie Tidhar.”
—Andy Duncan, three-time World Fantasy Award winner
“Tidhar has been compared to writers like Philip K. Dick and Kurt Vonnegut, but, with the story’s spiraling structure and novel-within-a-novel mystery, the writers that came to my mind the most while reading were Jorge Luis Borges and Michael Ende.”
—Ancillary Review of Books
“The Circumference of the World is an ambitious and ambiguous book showing Tidhar at top form.”
—Chicago Review of Books
“Reading a new Lavie Tidhar novel is always a treat. You can count on engaging prose paired with an inventive story and The Circumference of the World certainly fits that bill.”
—The Speculative Shelf
“Like matter spiraling into a black hole—everything here simply lights up, bathing the reader with its intense radiation. An amazing read, strongly recommended.”
—Blue Book Balloon
“The author weaves rational thought, a bit of fanaticism, madness and mysticism into a tapestry that will fascinate contemporary readers and would have made the writers who came before him proud.”
—Los Angeles Public Library
“It’s enthralling, meta, and sure to surprise you in the best of ways.”
—Portalist
5/5 stars “Mr. Tidhar's love of SF is real, y’all, and the total shift in styles and tone and voice just makes me want to clap with joy. Again, he shows me what a world-class talent he is.”
—Bradley Horner’s Book Corner
5/5 stars “This is a gripping read, a blend of science fiction and fantasy with a little detective fiction thrown in. I’ve read other books by the author and have also found them to be strange and beautiful. I loved this.”
—The Book Lover’s Boudoir
“Lavie Tidhar is one of today’s most prolific SF writers, deeply embedded in the scene as writer, editor and anthologist, and who also has an encyclopedic knowledge of SF history. Circumference of the World puts all of these together in a novel that comprises a bewilderingly rich tapestry of SF allusion.”
—Book and Film Globe
“Wow! I can’t remember the last book I read like this that wasn’t written by Phillip K. Dick! The book was trippy and weird, leaving me wondering what really happened in it in all the best ways.”
—Disciples of Boltax
“A creative space opera strewn with Easter eggs from science fiction and fantasy.
—Woven Tale Press
“A genre-splitting poetic expression that pays homage to classic science fiction with call-outs and appearances by Campbell, Heinlein, and others.”
—Those Crazy Books
“Lavie Tidhar’s trippy, metafictional ode to the golden age of science fiction.”
—Literary Hub
“This book contains a memoir, a hard-boiled detective section, a prison journal, portions of a non-existent book from the pulp era of sci-fi, and the letters of writers. It’s brilliant.”
—PrimmLife
“Fascinating world building, questions and [an] excellent storytelling.”
—Scrapping and Playing
“All in all, Lavie Tidhar is a rare story-teller, indeed, equally adept at pondering metaphysical questions, skewering cynics who exploit religious fanaticism for personal gain, and firing off bursts of intriguing ideas, reminiscent of Charles Stross. What a delight it was to let Tidhar’s entertaining exuberance sweep me away.”
—Analog
“This novel is a powerful work of meta-fiction, we can compare it to PKD, which is a compliment around here but it is a pure product of Lavie Tihar's genius. His blend of imagination, genre history and ability to blend into thought experiments is what makes him one of my favorite modern writers.”
—Postcards From a Dying World News
award-winning author of Shambling Towards Hiroshim James Morrow
Ingeniously constructed and stylistically protean, this seven-course banquet of a novel glistens with the Golden Age of science fiction, even as it nourishes our neurons with a marvelous thought experiment.”
award-winning author Daryl Gregory
Can we all just admit now that Lavie Tidhar’s a genius?”
Pulitzer Prize–winning author Junot Díaz
Tidhar wins it all with this magnificently original mind-bender of a novel.”
award-winning author James Morrow
Ingeniously constructed and stylistically protean, this seven-course banquet of a novel glistens with the Golden Age of science fiction, even as it nourishes our neurons with a marvelous thought experiment.”
Library Journal
07/01/2023
Tidhar's (Neom) novel begins with obsession over an infamous, possibly mythical book that disappears upon reading and leaves death in its wake. The book, Lode Stars, if it even exists, either brings a truth too terrible to bear to an unsuspecting world or is a great hoax perpetrated by an inveterate con man. A mathematician has lost her grip on reality, a criminal collector has killed himself, and an entire religion has been founded in pursuit of the truth that is supposed to lie within its pages. This novel is one wild ride, combining the purported text of the infamous book itself with a paean to the Golden Age of SF that produced it. Longtime SF readers will easily spot the real-world parallels, but that doesn't stop Tidhar from telling a compelling story of obsession and greed that will make readers think about the nature of reality. VERDICT Readers who fell hard into the metafiction of The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge or the you-are-there gossip of Astounding by Alec Nevala-Lee will likely be as obsessed with this book as the characters are with Lode Stars.—Marlene Harris
MAY 2024 - AudioFile
Part detective novel, part fairy tale, this complex story about the hunt for a book that disappears after one has read it is expertly delivered by a trinity of talent. Stefan Rudnicki takes on the majestic tones of mysterious celestial beings that interject their commentary throughout the narrative. Mathematician Delia Welegtabit first discovers the disappearing book; her tantalizing personality is embodied by Justine Eyre, whose light British accent bridges Delia's journey from her South Pacific roots to her current home in London. Maxwell Caulfield's mature voice is an odd match for the naïve London bookdealer Daniel Chase, but the unctuous Eastern European inflections Caulfield employs for mob boss Oskar Lens are highly effective. This collaborative effort results in a well-orchestrated listening experience. E.E. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2023-06-21
When a mathematician goes missing while searching for a legendary science-fiction novel, his wife hires a disabled book dealer to bring him home.
Maybe the universe’s energy really does get recycled, because this eclectic speculative novel manages to be simultaneously contemporary, nostalgic, and retro in a way that wouldn’t be unfamiliar to the SF icons to which it pays tribute. It’s a whodunit in structure but steeped in heavy philosophy with a few Beat flourishes to boot. Delia Welegtabit grew up on a remote island where her proximity to the stars gifted her with a love of mathematics. In London circa 2001, Delia is married to Levi Armstrong, another young mathematician who dreams of making sense of the universe. After Levi disappears in search of a long-lost copy of an obscure 1962 SF novel called Lode Stars by Eugene Charles Hartley, Delia hires Daniel Chase, whose prodigious literary knowledge is blunted by his prosopagnosia (face-blindness), to find him. Immediately, Daniel is summoned by Oskar Lens, a shadowy underworld figure whose delusions and paranoia make him a very dangerous adversary indeed. Stylistically, we’re deep into Jonathan Lethem territory (Chandler-esque detective story with a heavy dose of weird) before Tidhar pulls back the curtain on the wizard himself, Hartley, whose book speculates that we’re all sentient memories swirling inside a black hole. Menace endures, as predatory parasites dubbed “eaters” prey on these sentient memories unless one possesses a coded copy of Lode Stars, which protects its charge. In a familiar turn, Robert Heinlein drunkenly suggests to Hartley that if he wants to make millions, he should really start his own religion, which inspires the author to found the Scientology-esque Church of the All-Seeing Eyes before disappearing himself. The plot may collapse into noodle-bending nonsense, but Tidhar’s rich portrayal of the pulpy golden age of science fiction, distinctive characters, and nimble turns of phrase make for a cool confection.
A nifty artifact about the perils and prognostications of the science fictional world.
