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Fifth Head Of Cerberus Paperback – March 15, 1994

by Gene Wolfe (Author)

4.3 604 ratings

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Back in print for the first time in more than a decade, Gene Wolfe's The Fifth Head of Cerberus is a universally acknowledged masterpiece of science fiction by one of the field's most brilliant writers.

Far out from Earth, two sister planets, Saint Anne and Saint Croix, circle each other in an eternal dance. It is said a race of shapeshifters once lived here, only to perish when men came. But one man believes they can still be found, somewhere in the back of the beyond.

In The Fifth Head of Cerberus, Wolfe skillfully interweaves three bizarre tales to create a mesmerizing pattern: the harrowing account of the son of a mad genius who discovers his hideous heritage; a young man's mythic dreamquest for his darker half; the bizarre chronicle of a scientists' nightmarish imprisonment. Like an intricate, braided knot, the pattern at last unfolds to reveal astonishing truths about this strange and savage alien landscape.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A brothel keeper's sons discuss genocide and plot murder; a young alien wanderer is pursued by his shadow double; and a political prisoner tries to prove his identity, not least to himself. Gene Wolfe's first novel consists of three linked sections, all of them elegant broodings on identity, sameness, and strangeness, and all of them set on the vividly evoked colony worlds of Ste. Croix and Ste. Anne, twin planets delicately poised in mutual orbit.

Marsch, the victim in the third story, is the apparent author of the second and a casual visitor whose naïve questions precipitate tragedy in the first. The sections dance around one another like the planets of their settings. Clones, downloaded personalities inhabiting robots, aliens that perhaps mimicked humans so successfully that they forgot who they were, a French culture adopted by its ruthless oppressors--there are lots of ways to lose yourself, and perhaps the worst is to think that freedom consists of owning other people, that identity is won at the expense of others.

It is easy to be impressed by the intellectual games of Wolfe's stunning book and forget that he is, and always has been, the most intensely moral of SF writers. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk

Review

“Gene Wolfe is unique. If there were forty or fifty of this first-rate author--no, let's be reasonable and ask Higher Authorities for only four or five--American literature as a whole would be enormously enriched.” ―Chicago Sun-Times

“One of the major fictional works of the decade...Wolfe's novel, with its elusiveness and its beauty, haunts one long after reading it.” ―Pamela Sargent

“A richly imaginative exploration of the nature of identity and individuality.” ―Malcolm Edwards, The Science Fiction Encyclopedia

“SF for the thinking reader..The style is highly literate and the ideas sophisticated and handled with sensitivity.” ―Amazing SF

“One of the 100 best science fiction novels...A truly extraordinary work. One of the most cunningly wrought narratives in the whole of modern SF, a masterpiece of misdirection, subtle clues, and apparently casual revelations.” ―David Pringle

About the Author

Gene Wolfe (1931-2019) was the Nebula Award-winning author of The Book of the New Sun tetralogy in the Solar Cycle, as well as the World Fantasy Award winners The Shadow of the Torturer and Soldier of Sidon. He was also a prolific writer of distinguished short fiction, which has been collected in such award-winning volumes as Storeys from the Old Hotel and The Best of Gene Wolfe.

A recipient of the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, the Edward E. Smith Memorial Award, and six Locus Awards, among many other honors, Wolfe was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2007, and named Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2012.

BRIAN EVENSON is the author of a dozen books, most recently the story collection The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell (2021). His penultimate collection, Song for the Unraveling of the World (2019), won the Shirley Jackson Award and the World Fantasy Award and was a finalist for the Ray Bradbury Prize. Other recent books include A Collapse of Horses (2016) and The Warren (2016). His novel Last Days won the ALA-RUSA award for Best Horror Novel of 2009. His novel The Open Curtain was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an International Horror Guild (IHG) Award. His 2003 collection The Wavering Knife won the IHG Award. He is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes, an NEA fellowship, and a Guggenheim Award. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at CalArts.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Fifth Head of Cerberus

Three NovellasBy Wolfe, Gene

Orb Books

Copyright © 1994 Wolfe, Gene
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780312890209
When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow,
And the owlet whoops to the wolf below,
That eats the she-wolf’s young.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge—“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

When I was a boy my brother David and I had to go to bed early whether we were sleepy or not. In summer particularly, bedtime often came before sunset; and because our dormitory was in the east wing of the house, with a broad window facing the central courtyard and thus looking west, the hard, pinkish light sometimes streamed in for hours while we lay staring out at my father’s crippled monkey perched on a flaking parapet, or telling stories, one bed to another, with soundless gestures.
Our dormitory was on the uppermost floor of the house, and our window had a shutter of twisted iron which we were forbidden to open. I suppose the theory was that a burglar might, on some rainy morning (this being the only time he could hope to find the roof, which was fitted out as a sort of pleasure garden, deserted) let down a rope and so enter our room unless the shutter was closed.
The object of this hypothetical and very courageous thief would not, of course, be merely to steal us. Children, whether boys or girls, were extraordinarily cheap in Port-Mimizon; and indeed I was once told that my father who had formerly traded in them no longer did so because of the poor market. Whether or not this was true, everyone—or nearly everyone—knew of some professional who would furnish what was wanted, within reason, at a low price. These men made the children of the poor and the careless their study, and should you want, say, a brown-skinned, red-haired little girl or one who was plump or who lisped, a blond boy like David or a pale, brown-haired, brown-eyed boy such as I, they could provide one in a few hours.
Neither, in all probability, would the imaginary burglar seek to hold us for ransom, though my father was thought in some quarters to be immensely rich. There were several reasons for this. Those few people who knew that my brother and I existed knew also, or at least had been led to believe, that my father cared nothing at all for us. Whether this was true or not, I cannot say; certainly I believed it, and my father never gave me the least reason to doubt it, though at the time the thought of killing him had never occurred to me.
And if these reasons were not sufficiently convincing, anyone with an understanding of the stratum in which he had become perhaps the most permanent feature would realize that for him, who was already forced to give large bribes to the secret police, to once disgorge money in that way would leave him open to a thousand ruinous attacks; and this may have been—this and the fear in which he was held—the real reason we were never stolen.
The iron shutter is (for I am writing now in my old dormitory room) hammered to resemble in a stiff and oversymmetrical way the boughs of a willow. In my boyhood it was overgrown by a silver trumpet vine (since dug up) which had scrambled up the wall from the court below, and I used to wish that it would close the window entirely and thus shut out the sun when we were trying to sleep; but David, whose bed was under the window, was forever reaching up to snap off branches so that he could whistle through the hollow stems, making a sort of panpipe of four or five. The piping, of course, growing louder as David grew bolder, would in time attract the attention of Mr. Million, our tutor. Mr. Million would enter the room in perfect silence, his wide wheels gliding across the uneven floor while David pretended sleep. The panpipe might by this time be concealed under his pillow, in the sheet, or even under the mattress, but Mr. Million would find it.
What he did with those little musical instruments after confiscating them from David I had forgotten until yesterday; although in prison, when we were kept in by storms or heavy snow, I often occupied myself by trying to recall it. To have broken them, or dropped them through the shutter onto the patio below would have been completely unlike him; Mr. Million never broke anything intentionally, and never wasted anything. I could visualize perfectly the half-sorrowing expression with which he drew the tiny pipes out (the face which seemed to float behind his screen was much like my father‘s) and the way in which he turned and glided from the room. But what became of them?
Yesterday, as I said (this is the sort of thing that gives me confidence), I remembered. He had been talking to me here while I worked, and when he left it seemed to me—as my glance idly followed his smooth motion through the doorway—that something, a sort of flourish I recalled from my earliest days, was missing. I closed my eyes and tried to remember what the appearance had been, eliminating any skepticism, any attempt to guess in advance what I “must” have seen; and I found that the missing element was a brief flash, the glint of metal, over Mr. Million’s head.
Once I had established this, I knew that it must have come from a swift upward motion of his arm, like a salute, as he left our room. For an hour or more I could not guess the reason for that gesture, and could only suppose it, whatever it had been, to have been destroyed by time. I tried to recall if the corridor outside our dormitory had, in that really not so distant past, held some object now vanished: a curtain or a windowshade, an appliance to be activated, anything that might account for it. There was nothing.
I went into the corridor and examined the floor minutely for marks indicating furniture. I looked for hooks or nails driven into the walls, pushing aside the coarse old tapestries. Craning my neck, I searched the ceiling. Then, after an hour, I looked at the door itself and saw what I had not seen in the thousands of times I had passed through it: that like all the doors in this house, which is very old, it had a massive frame of wooden slabs, and that one of these, forming the lintel, protruded enough from the wall to make a narrow shelf above the door.
I pushed my chair into the hall and stood on the seat. The shelf was thick with dust in which lay forty-seven of my brother’s pipes and a wonderful miscellany of other small objects. Objects many of which I recalled, but some of which still fail to summon any flicker of response from the recesses of my mind…
The small blue egg of a songbird, speckled with brown. I suppose the bird must have nested in the vine outside our window, and that David or I despoiled the nest only to be robbed ourselves by Mr. Million. But I do not recall the incident.
And there is a (broken) puzzle made of the bronzed viscera of some small animal, and—wonderfully evocative—one of those large and fancifully decorated keys, sold annually, which during the year of its currency will admit the possessor to certain rooms of the city library after hours. Mr. Million, I suppose, must have confiscated it when, after expiration, he found it doing duty as a toy; but what memories!
My father had his own library, now in my possession; but we were forbidden to go there. I have a dim memory of standing—at how early an age I cannot say—before that huge carved door. Of seeing it swing back, and the crippled monkey on my father‘s shoulder pressing itself against his hawk face, with the black scarf and scarlet dressing gown beneath and the rows and rows of shabby books and notebooks behind them, and the sick-sweet smell of formaldehyde coming from the laboratory beyond the sliding mirror.
I do not remember what he said or whether it had been I or another who had knocked, but I do recall that after the door had closed, a woman in pink whom I thought very pretty stooped to bring her face to the level of my own and assured me that my father had written all the books I had just seen, and that I doubted it not at all.

Copyright © 1972 by Gene Wolfe

Continues...
Excerpted from The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Wolfe, Gene Copyright © 1994 by Wolfe, Gene. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Orb Trade; First Edition (March 15, 1994)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 264 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0312890206
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0312890209
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.66 x 8.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #384,205 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #920 in Science Fiction Anthologies (Books)
- #1,156 in Science Fiction Short Stories
- #1,165 in Genetic Engineering Science Fiction (Books)

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4.3 604 ratings

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Gene Wolfe

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Gene Wolfe is winner of the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, and many other awards. In 2007, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. He lives in Barrington, Illinois.

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Customers find the storytelling clever and brilliant. They describe the book as an entertaining read with excellent prose and a strong literary intent. Readers appreciate the elegant writing style and pacing, which stands the test of time.

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28 customers mention "Storytelling"28 positive0 negative

Customers find the storytelling clever and engaging. They appreciate the subtle writing style and wonderful ideas. The three interrelated novellas are complex and rich, rewarding multiple readings. The story is about identity and is clearly related in structure and details to the book of the short sun.

"...the anthropological speculation behind it make for an enjoyable and moving tale, The Fifth Head of Cerberus contains some philosophic themes that..." Read more

"...All the imagery is pertinent; there is all the meaty allegory we long for in traditional science fiction...." Read more

"...Every sentence in a book has been placed there for a reason. No detail of character, setting or action is described thoughtlessly, and no detail..." Read more

"...I love the beauty of Wolfe's writing style, I love the worlds he builds, I love the story and details that only become clear with careful reading,..." Read more

22 customers mention "Readability"22 positive0 negative

Customers find the book easy to read and entertaining. They say it's a great modern novel with interesting content. The Kindle edition has errors, but overall it's still an enjoyable read with excellent re-read value.

"...the story and the anthropological speculation behind it make for an enjoyable and moving tale, The Fifth Head of Cerberus contains some philosophic..." Read more

"...the course of many years, and each time I find both that understand the book better, and that, like a bottle of incredible wine, aging has only..." Read more

"...The first is well written and reasonably interesting.It's also utterly incomprehensible at points.The second novel is absolute rubbish!..." Read more

"I loved this book...." Read more

17 customers mention "Writing style"12 positive5 negative

Customers enjoy the book's writing style. They find it imaginative and strong. The narrative is straightforward and elegant, making it accessible yet complex.

"...Wolfe's narrative style is not opaque or contorted. It is straightforward and elegant throughout...." Read more

"...Instead, dive in, enjoy the elegant prose, hang on to the galloping story as it carries you forward, and marvel at the form of the whole as you..." Read more

"I loved this book. I love the beauty of Wolfe's writing style, I love the worlds he builds, I love the story and details that only become clear with..." Read more

"...ambiguity and difficulty in literature .Here we are confronted with outright incoherence.There is no real excuse for that.It's a failing...." Read more

5 customers mention "Elegance"5 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's elegant and lovely prose. They find the writing style amusing and evocative.

"...It is straightforward and elegant throughout...." Read more

"This is a stunning, confusing, mystifying book, as are most of Gene Wolfe's books. What a mind and what a writer!..." Read more

"Not my first Gene Wolfe book. His style is mildly amusing. This is one of his best..." Read more

"Brilliant, beautiful, frightening, profound. As sixteen more words are required, I will consider my first four, and decide them enough." Read more

5 customers mention "Pacing"5 positive0 negative

Customers find the book engaging and well-written. They say it withstands time and is a work of great quality by one of the world's finest authors.

"...the genre SF books have always existed, but others like these stand the test of time...Sort of...." Read more

"...I will say that the first novella in the book is a very strong, intriguing start. The second novella describes an alien society...." Read more

"...I've never seen anything else like it, and it stands up to repeated readings...." Read more

"A tour de force by one of the world's finest authors..." Read more

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LostMarble
Anthropological Mystery/Speculative Ethics
Reviewed in the United States on October 22, 2009
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If you were expecting space opera, yes, you will be disappointed. The Fifth Head of Cerberus is a novel with some serious literary intentions. Many (most?) fans aren't really keen on that when they pick up an sf novel.

But I would like to comment about the many reviews that claim this book is difficult, that it requires repeated readings, that it has many possible interpretations. (BTW, if you want to get someone interested in a book, don't tell him that he has to read it several times to understand it!)

Wolfe's narrative style is not opaque or contorted. It is straightforward and elegant throughout. It does switch scenes, sometimes frequently, to tell the reader what the other characters are up to, and it does go back and forth in time, to some extent. These are techniques to which any reader of any genre of fiction in the 21st century is well-accustomed.

Be that as it may, The Fifth Head of Cerberus is a mystery novel, in this case a speculative anthropological mystery. Like many mystery novels, it includes a number of riddles whose solutions intertwine. The most fundamental is how the societies of the fictive planets reached their very peculiar current condition. The solutions are not spelled out for the reader in the courtroom denouement of a traditional detective novel, though they are finally revealed by means of a legal evidentiary investigation. There is one solution (the "fourth story" mentioned by some reviewers) that explains the intertwined enigmas. A plethora of alternatives is neither required nor possible. The reader can gradually come to know the fourth story by means of clues scattered liberally on almost every page of the other three. The most important clues are repeated, often several times, and well signalled. Others are cleverly or clumsily dropped by the wayside. Nothing is wasted. Every sentence has significance. An unexplained or puzzling remark or occurrence is a signal of something that will assume importance later.

The mystery (or mysteries) can be solved easily on a single reading. One has to be awake to detail, keep in mind obvious clues, and should probably pause now and then to mull over what might solve the riddles currently in play, what explanations might work, what is the evidence pro and con: like reading a detective novel. Still, several reviewers have insightfully pointed out that the "fourth story" of the triad (i.e the various mysteries' explication) is not found on the printed page but is carefully constructed by the author in the alert reader's imagination. By the end, the reader has all the information he needs to share the author's vision of the history of his planets and characters.

Though the story and the anthropological speculation behind it make for an enjoyable and moving tale, The Fifth Head of Cerberus contains some philosophic themes that run deeper than the mysterious plot. Every part of the narrative illustrates or exemplifies these more profound themes. Wolfe does not make philosophical statements but ruminates, always employing the narrative and characters, always "showing rather than telling".

Other reviewers have discussed most of these themes, but have neglected the most important, that is, the moral character and behavior of the novel's people and animals (and machines). I have been told that always at the forefront of Wolfe's writing is morality, the moral dimension of his subject matter. If so, The Fifth Head of Cerberus is no exception. The foundational characteristic of Wolfe's imagined world is that the physical and mental parts of all its living beings are malleable and transferable. Every character embodies the moral strategies and behaviors called forth by this psychophysical (inter-)changeability. By our standards, all three protagonists are amoral members of amoral societies, yet their lives are undergirded by inescapable ethical infrastructures. Some reviewers have asked what the novel is about. I answer. It is about morality, ethics in an invented world and in our own. Morality in extreme circumstances is what each of the three narratives and the triad as a whole are about. And again, not a sentence is wasted.

The Fifth Head of Cerberus was published at the time when genetic engineering and cloning technology had only begun to break down the boundaries of our physical identity. Today, the book should be recommended reading for any seminar in Speculative Ethics. (Or Speculative Anthropology, if there should be such a discipline!)

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Gabriella L Garlock
Timelessly excellent writing; must adapt to the narrower view of male novelists from the 70s
Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2019
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Why can't more novelists write with such care for historical allusion and subtle symbolism? I'm new to Wolfe and intend to read more, trusting his later work will reflect somewhat more enlightened times. All the imagery is pertinent; there is all the meaty allegory we long for in traditional science fiction. The storytellers in this trilogy will ramble and test your patience, but your attention to their tedious details will be rewarded. I know the genre SF books have always existed, but others like these stand the test of time...Sort of.

I thought all throughout what a shame the casual sexism (bordering on misogyny?) keeps this otherwise brilliant book from translating to present day sensibilities. It's frustrating that all the observations on servitude and slavery were confined to the psyches of male characters while even more prominent characters who were "slaves" but female existed. The reviewer Elizabeth best encapsulated my objections: "Weird rambles about evolutionary psychology that don't hold up cross-culturally. If you are a woman yourself, it's pretty alienating." But I grew up in the 70s; I get it, men wrote for men, and I'm well-versed in suspending self-awareness just to be able to read good sci-fi. And this is good sci-fi; I just happened to discover it now, not then.

The reviewer Lost Marble and others observe Wolfe's subordination of plotline: "The Fifth Head of Cerberus contains some philosophic themes that run deeper than the mysterious plot." I suspect I will find this true in his later stories, and admit that most of my favorite writers do the same. I find the added dimensions of this complex storytelling far more valuable.

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Perry E. Metzger
A tour de force by one of the world's finest authors
Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2011
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Gene Wolfe is difficult to praise highly enough without sounding unconvincing. One can urge people to read his work, claim that he's one of the greatest living writers in the English language regardless of genre (indeed, perhaps the greatest), one can ramble on about his virtues for hours to friends and strangers, and in the end, to those who have not read him, the claims start to sound unhinged, even deranged. "Aren't you overselling him just a tad?" they inevitably ask.

To this I can only say: read some of his work and see. "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" is perhaps the best place to start, not because it is his easiest work (it is not), but because is both fairly compact and an example of Wolfe at his best. The commitment is smaller than if you launch in to the Latro books, or "The Book of the New Sun", but the joy to be had on reading is no smaller. You will know soon enough if Wolfe is, for you, all that his admirers say he is. I say "for you" because taste in literature is inevitably personal, and perhaps you will find that Wolfe is not what you are seeking. Perhaps, however, you will find that he is, and if so, you have a wonderful treat awaiting you.

I suggest that you not read any review of this book that describes the plot. In fact, I suggest that, if you choose to buy the book, you avoid reading overly much about it, looking at the cover image, or reading the back cover copy. None of them will improve your experience of the text. No summary will do you any good, anyway. I could explain the plot of in a couple of moments, and it would in no way convey the pleasure that reading it will bring to you. In fact, knowing anything about the plot at all will explain nothing about why you want to read it, and might, in fact give one precisely the wrong impression about why one would want to read it.

Wolfe is said to have claimed "my definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure." "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" is, by that standard, some of the very best literature there is. Immediately after I first read the book, I was driven to read it again. I have since re-read it perhaps five or six times over the course of many years, and each time I find both that understand the book better, and that, like a bottle of incredible wine, aging has only improved the content.

I would normally be reluctant to give five stars to any work, but not in this case. Can this book really compete with, say, "Moby Dick", or "Hamlet", or "Lolita", or "Ulysses" in the canon of great literature? I claim yes, it does. See for yourself.

I will close with a few remarks to serve someone newly encountering Wolfe's work. He is a master craftsman, and makes few if any mistakes in shaping the intricate puzzle boxes he hands to his readers. Every sentence in a book has been placed there for a reason. No detail of character, setting or action is described thoughtlessly, and no detail will be described to you twice. Wolfe does not telegraph his motives or paint a summary on a billboard -- he expects a thoughtful reader. That said, I discourage you from treating his works as mystery stories or as a game to be solved. They are not. You should not be attempting to commit each line to memory, and should not try to drain every last bit of meaning from them on first reading. You will not succeed, and it will serve no purpose. Instead, dive in, enjoy the elegant prose, hang on to the galloping story as it carries you forward, and marvel at the form of the whole as you reach the end. When you inevitably wonder about something you may have missed, worry not -- you can and will enjoy the work even more on re-reading.

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Top reviews from other countries

JOHN A. KENNEDY
Awesome
Reviewed in Canada on December 12, 2023
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Awesome

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Krishna
Gene Wolfe at his best
Reviewed in India on October 7, 2023
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This book, one of the first books by the venerable Gene Wolfe, is a collection of three novellas that are related to each other. Stories revolve around the colonization of a twin-planet system by humans and the consequences. The primary themes are that of identity and post-colonialism.

All three have the mystery of Gene Wolfe mastery via unreliable narratives, change in perspective, and no clear timelines/expositions. The first of the three novels is the easiest to read. The second is from the perspective for “aliens” on a planet that humans colonize. The third is a a series of broken readings of journals of a criminal.

If you are reading these for the first time, you may the book difficult to follow and confusing. If you are in this space, listen to the podcasts by The Alzabo Soup, a podcast that dissects Wolfe’s work among others, about the book and understand the mastery that lies at the heart of these novellas.

As I say for every Gene Wolfe novel — Wolfe’s works are sci-fi masterpieces cloaked as fantasy. Please read!

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Barry Bootle
Hugely subtle and deeply satisfying
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 31, 2011
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This is the most interesting book I've read in a long time. It's the first time I've read Gene Wolfe, but I've known for a while that he is thought by many to be the most influential science fiction writer alive today. I don't know enough about the genre to comment on that, but I will say that if you like superb writing that will make you think, you should give this a whirl, even if you are put off sci-fi by thoughts of gamma rays/singularities/force fields, etc etc.
The book consists of three very different but interlinked novellas, set on the twin worlds of Sainte Anne and Sainte Croix; a coming of age narrative by the son (apparently) of a brothel-keeper/sinister scientist, an etheral, hallucinatory tale about the original, aboriginal inhabitants of Sainte Anne, who (possibly) are later exterminated by settlers from Earth, and (ostensibly) the tale of an anthropologist from Earth, who has made it his life's work to study the history of the aboriginals.
But, in all the above tales, nothing is as straightforward as it seems, or indeed straightforward in any way.
Wolfe's themes are myriad, but the most obvious ones are identity, existence and the fallibility of human perception, nature versus nurture, and rites of passage. Wolfe handles them with dazzling skill; there are a number of fairly clear ambiguities, none of which are directly answered, and any amount of others that are hinted at with a breathtaking subtlety. He is either a genius or a very, very clever conjurer - I can't quite decide which. He writes beautifully, too.
The filmmaker Michael Haneke has said that he wants to pose questions to his viewers, rather than give answers. If this is the kind of thing you like, then I urge you to read this.

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Penis
Interesting book, doesn't have the same charm as other Wolfe books
Reviewed in Canada on November 4, 2022
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The book was interesting but didn't have the same magic pulling me in as BotNS and the Wizard Knight

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Acey Dishy
Very Satisfied
Reviewed in Canada on January 16, 2023
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Got it quickly, in perfect shape. Wolfe is as trippy and evocative as ever. Thanks, Amazon!

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Fifth Head Of Cerberus Paperback – March 15, 1994

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5.0 out of 5 stars Anthropological Mystery/Speculative Ethics

4.0 out of 5 stars Timelessly excellent writing; must adapt to the narrower view of male novelists from the 70s

5.0 out of 5 stars A tour de force by one of the world's finest authors

Top reviews from other countries

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome

5.0 out of 5 stars Gene Wolfe at his best

5.0 out of 5 stars Hugely subtle and deeply satisfying

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting book, doesn't have the same charm as other Wolfe books

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Satisfied

Anthropological Mystery/Speculative Ethics

Timelessly excellent writing; must adapt to the narrower view of male novelists from the 70s

A tour de force by one of the world's finest authors

Awesome

Gene Wolfe at his best

Hugely subtle and deeply satisfying

Interesting book, doesn't have the same charm as other Wolfe books

Very Satisfied