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A Maze Book to Get Lost In

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Hardcover
$18.00 US
5.37"W x 8.05"H x 0.96"D   | 16 oz | 28 per carton
On sale Mar 05, 2019 | 240 Pages | 9781984824448
Beautifully designed and gorgeously illustrated, this immersive, puzzle-like exploration of the history and psychology of mazes and labyrinths evokes the spirit of Choose Your Own Adventure, the textual inventiveness of Tom Stoppard, and the philosophical spirit of Jorge Luis Borges.

Labyrinths are as old as humanity, the proving grounds of heroes, the paths of pilgrims, symbols of spiritual rebirth and pleasure gardens for pure entertainment. Henry Eliot leads us on a twisting journey through the world of mazes, real and imagined, unraveling our ancient, abiding relationship with them and exploring why they continue to fascinate us, from Kafka to Kubrick to the myth of the Minotaur and a quest to solve the disappearance of the legendary Maze King.

Are you ready to step inside?
"Beautifully disorienting...A fun book to get lost in." 
Ari Shapiro, NPR

"Delightful, ingenious, and beautifully designed." 
Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy

"Captivating and informative.... Getting lost and found in Eliot's contemplative prose and Quibe's clever drawings is a...gratifying experience." 
—Publishers Weekly

"An utterly unique reading experience." 
Booklist

“The illustrations encourage the reader to follow a single red line as it surges and zigzags from page to page, sometimes making us read upside down or back to front. It turns reading into a game in which the book is both a puzzle and its own solution, and the results are variously enticing, frustrating, and addictive—not unlike a real maze.” 
Guardian

“Eliot's book darts with a nimble wit, sentences arcing from one page to the next so you must turn the entire thing as you read, an experience I had not had since the labyrinths of Mark Z. Danielewski's novel House of Leaves. Ariadne's red thread runs throughout, a sinuous scribble forming mazes, but also minotaurs and Mephistopheles and Lara Croft.”
New Statesman
"
 
"Real labyrinthine fun ... a remarkable feat of creativity."
Bookseller
 
"A hypnotising and strangely physical experience. Uniquely magical, each page offers new delights. Many books are described as 'journeys,' but Follow This Thread really is one.” 
Alan Connor, author of Two Girls, One on Each Knee

 
“Genuinely odd . . . you'll want to buy copies for all your friends.”
Spectator
 
“Beautifully immaculate degree zero prose . . . [an] exhilarating experience”
—Greg Bright, the “Maze King”
Henry Eliot is the author of The Penguin Classics Book, The Penguin Modern Classics Book, Follow This Thread and Curiocity: An Alternative A-Z of London. An inveterate bookworm, Henry has tackled a number of bookish adventures, such as recreating Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, leading pilgrims from Southwark to Canterbury and retelling the tales along the way; mounting a quest for the Holy Grail based on Malory's Morte d'Arthur; swimming across the Hellespont from Europe to Asia on the bicentenary of Lord Byron's crossing (the subject of Byron's 1810 poem, 'Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos'); and reading Ulysses in real-time on Bloomsday, 16 June, starting at 8am with grilled kidneys and finishing in the early hours of the following morning. He produced an interactive edition of Shakespeare's The Tempest in collaboration with Sir Ian McKellen and Professor Sir Jonathan Bate, which Apple named one of the '10 best apps of 2016', and for five years he was an editor of the Penguin Classics series in London. Today he is one of the QI research elves and hosts the podcast On the Road with Penguin Classics, in which he travels to discuss books with guests including Frank Cottrell Boyce, Louis de Bernières, Rachel Joyce, Patience Agbabi, Andrew Motion and Will Self. View titles by Henry Eliot

About

Beautifully designed and gorgeously illustrated, this immersive, puzzle-like exploration of the history and psychology of mazes and labyrinths evokes the spirit of Choose Your Own Adventure, the textual inventiveness of Tom Stoppard, and the philosophical spirit of Jorge Luis Borges.

Labyrinths are as old as humanity, the proving grounds of heroes, the paths of pilgrims, symbols of spiritual rebirth and pleasure gardens for pure entertainment. Henry Eliot leads us on a twisting journey through the world of mazes, real and imagined, unraveling our ancient, abiding relationship with them and exploring why they continue to fascinate us, from Kafka to Kubrick to the myth of the Minotaur and a quest to solve the disappearance of the legendary Maze King.

Are you ready to step inside?

Praise

"Beautifully disorienting...A fun book to get lost in." 
Ari Shapiro, NPR

"Delightful, ingenious, and beautifully designed." 
Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy

"Captivating and informative.... Getting lost and found in Eliot's contemplative prose and Quibe's clever drawings is a...gratifying experience." 
—Publishers Weekly

"An utterly unique reading experience." 
Booklist

“The illustrations encourage the reader to follow a single red line as it surges and zigzags from page to page, sometimes making us read upside down or back to front. It turns reading into a game in which the book is both a puzzle and its own solution, and the results are variously enticing, frustrating, and addictive—not unlike a real maze.” 
Guardian

“Eliot's book darts with a nimble wit, sentences arcing from one page to the next so you must turn the entire thing as you read, an experience I had not had since the labyrinths of Mark Z. Danielewski's novel House of Leaves. Ariadne's red thread runs throughout, a sinuous scribble forming mazes, but also minotaurs and Mephistopheles and Lara Croft.”
New Statesman
"
 
"Real labyrinthine fun ... a remarkable feat of creativity."
Bookseller
 
"A hypnotising and strangely physical experience. Uniquely magical, each page offers new delights. Many books are described as 'journeys,' but Follow This Thread really is one.” 
Alan Connor, author of Two Girls, One on Each Knee

 
“Genuinely odd . . . you'll want to buy copies for all your friends.”
Spectator
 
“Beautifully immaculate degree zero prose . . . [an] exhilarating experience”
—Greg Bright, the “Maze King”

Author

Henry Eliot is the author of The Penguin Classics Book, The Penguin Modern Classics Book, Follow This Thread and Curiocity: An Alternative A-Z of London. An inveterate bookworm, Henry has tackled a number of bookish adventures, such as recreating Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, leading pilgrims from Southwark to Canterbury and retelling the tales along the way; mounting a quest for the Holy Grail based on Malory's Morte d'Arthur; swimming across the Hellespont from Europe to Asia on the bicentenary of Lord Byron's crossing (the subject of Byron's 1810 poem, 'Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos'); and reading Ulysses in real-time on Bloomsday, 16 June, starting at 8am with grilled kidneys and finishing in the early hours of the following morning. He produced an interactive edition of Shakespeare's The Tempest in collaboration with Sir Ian McKellen and Professor Sir Jonathan Bate, which Apple named one of the '10 best apps of 2016', and for five years he was an editor of the Penguin Classics series in London. Today he is one of the QI research elves and hosts the podcast On the Road with Penguin Classics, in which he travels to discuss books with guests including Frank Cottrell Boyce, Louis de Bernières, Rachel Joyce, Patience Agbabi, Andrew Motion and Will Self. View titles by Henry Eliot