Strange Bodies

A patient in a mental hospital claims to be a dead man in this dizzying novel of deception and psychosis by the author of the National Book Award finalist Far North.

“A page-turning, thought-provoking, exhilarating novel . . . ‘Thriller’ may be a somewhat misleading label to fasten on a modern fable that also has elements of science fiction, dystopia, and domestic comedy. But without a doubt, Strange Bodies is a thrill to read.”-The Wall Street Journal

Whatever this is, it started when Nicholas Slopen came back from the dead.

In a locked ward of a notorious psychiatric hospital sits a man who insists that he is Dr. Nicholas Slopen, failed husband and impoverished Samuel Johnson scholar. Slopen has been dead for months, yet nothing can make this man change his story. What begins as a tale of apparent forgery involving unknown letters by the great Dr. Johnson grows to encompass a conspiracy between a Silicon Valley mogul and his Russian allies to exploit the darkest secret of Soviet technology: the Malevin Procedure.

Marcel Theroux's Strange Bodies takes the reader on a dizzying speculative journey that poses questions about identity, authenticity, and what it means to be truly human.

“A literary science fiction novel as entertaining as it is thought-provoking and disturbing. . . . Theroux masterfully braids horror and ontology, Nabokovian doppelgangers and Orwellian satire into a tragicomic narrative that pulls tight as a noose. . . . A brilliant, troubling thriller.”-Los Angeles Times

“Often enthralling and occasionally maddening, the novel expands the reader’s sense of possibility even as it strains credulity.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“[Theroux] is a superb writer. . . . There are beautiful things, real things, tucked in this novel.”-The New York Times