Fifth Head Of Cerberus

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.

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264 pages

Average rating: 7.17

6 RATINGS

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Community Reviews

ChrisCarne
Jan 02, 2023
8/10 stars
Although it doesn't quite reach the heights of his later works such as The Book of the New Sun, all Wolfe's main preoccupations and literary trickery are already in place here. As with so much of his work, themes of self and other; identity and difference; real and unreal; human and non-human; the arbitrariness of such distinctions and the fluidity of their boundaries are at the heart of this. Narratively, there's the familiar Wolfe ambiguity, leaving gaps and dropping subtle clues. If you like this chances are you'll like the rest of Wolfe's work, if not, not.

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