S.

One book. Two readers. A world of mystery, menace, and desire.

A young woman picks up a book left behind by a stranger. Inside it are his margin notes, which reveal a reader entranced by the story and by its mysterious author. She responds with notes of her own, leaving the book for the stranger, and so begins an unlikely conversation that plunges them both into the unknown.

The book: Ship of Theseus, the final novel by a prolific but enigmatic writer named V.M. Straka, in which a man with no past is shanghaied onto a strange ship with a monstrous crew and launched onto a disorienting and perilous journey.

The writer: Straka, the incendiary and secretive subject of one of the world's greatest mysteries, a revolutionary about whom the world knows nothing apart from the words he wrote and the rumors that swirl around him.

The readers: Jennifer and Eric, a college senior and a disgraced grad student, both facing crucial decisions about who they are, who they might become, and how much they're willing to trust another person with their passions, hurts, and fears.

S., conceived by filmmaker J. J. Abrams and written by award-winning novelist Doug Dorst, is the chronicle of two readers finding each other in the margins of a book and enmeshing themselves in a deadly struggle between forces they don't understand, and it is also Abrams and Dorst's love letter to the written word.

這輩子或許還有機會讀到更好的故事，
但再也不會有任何一本書，能讓我從閱讀中得到如此純粹的快樂。——亞馬遜書店讀者
這不只是一本小說，更是一場挑戰紙本書可能性的極致冒險，一部獻給文字的動人情書！
★《Lost檔案》《不可能的任務III》鬼才編導J. J.亞伯拉罕首部小說創作，打敗丹布朗《地獄》，被亞馬遜讀者選為「最想擁有的小說」！
★美國首刷20萬冊火速斷貨，橫掃全球排行榜：英美亞馬遜、美國邦諾書店、全美獨立書店小說榜、
紐約時報小說榜、出版人周刊、日本亞馬遜書店外文館、新加坡紀伊國屋書店、誠品外文館……
★紙本書創舉！手寫字呈現小說劇情，收錄實體配件，遭圖書館抗議：本書只能收藏，無法借閱！
★吳念真‧蔡康永‧許悔之‧吳定謙‧全台書店職人代表 嚴選推薦

——關鍵角色——
〈兩個讀者〉她在圖書館拾獲陌生人的泛黃舊書，看見內頁有許多鉛筆寫的眉批。她讀著陌生人的字跡，忍不住拿原子筆寫下見解，再把書放回原處。隔天陌生人回來取書，讀了她的留言，又以鋼筆寫下回應後，把書放了回去。兩個愛書人從未碰面，卻抱著對同一本小說的情感，在書頁間當起筆友。
〈一本小說〉她和他傳閱的舊書《希修斯之船》是文壇一大懸案，據傳作者尚未寫完就人間蒸發，打字機血跡斑斑，散落一地的手稿中，獨缺了故事結局。
〈還有：你〉你捧讀這本理應是全新的小說，卻發現書頁早已被兩個讀者塗寫過，紙張彷彿透著圖書館的陳舊氣息。書中還附有明信片、餐巾紙、羅盤等材質各異的物件。你隨著筆跡深入故事核心，得知書中竟暗藏求救密語，謎團未解，你卻在書中發現不屬於她和他的神秘筆跡，寫著「S」……

Emmy-Award-winning filmmaker J.J. Abrams has produced, directed, or written films and television shows including Fringe, Lost, Alias, Felicity, Star Trek, Cloverfield, Mission: Impossible, and more.

Doug Dorst teaches writing at Texas State University-San Marcos. He is the author of the PEN/Hemingway-nominated novel Alive in Necropolis and the collection The Surf Guru. His work has appeared in McSweeney's, Ploughshares, Epoch, and elsewhere. Dorst is also a three-time Jeopardy! champion.

"The best-looking book I've ever seen. . . . The book is so perfectly realized that it's easy to fall under its spell. . . . If you want to write a romantic mystery meta-novel in which two bibliophiles investigate the conspiracy around an enigmatic Eastern European author, you couldn't choose a better team." --Joshua Rothan, New Yorker

"Impressively smart, engaging . . . Filled with secrets and stories that are endlessly beguiling and inviting . . . Reading S., and trying to decode everything [was] an incredibly enjoyable, fun experience, as well as a particularly immersive one. . . . For all its mysteries and intrigues, this is a book about the value of books, and what they can offer us that other storytelling mediums cannot." --Wired

"S. is gorgeous, a masterpiece of verisimilitude. . . . The book's spiritual cousin is A.S. Byatt's Possession. . . . The brilliance of S. is less in its showy exterior than the intimate and ingeniously visual way it shows how others' words become pathways to our lives and relationships." --Washington Post

"Both as literature and as a physical object, S. is a profound and tremendous work of art. . . . Brilliantly conceived and perfectly executed, the book harkens back to a golden age of storytelling. . . . An audacious literary achievement that calls to mind Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire, Chris Ware's Building Stories and even Charles Portis' Masters of Atlantis." --Miami Herald

"Reading S. is fun, and the book feels alive . . . Gloriously embroidered with marginalia and jammed with artifacts inserted between its pages . . . A celebration of the book as a physical thing." --Chicago Tribune

"An intriguing and impressive experiment in storytelling that's full of paranoia, conspiracy theory, love and mystery."

---USA Today
"The S. experience is like reading a novel while eavesdropping on a conversation...As if Franz Kafka had written an episode of "Lost."" --CNN.com

"Equal parts romance, historical mystery and conceptual art . . . S. should be regarded as an elaborate love poem to the printed word and a eulogy to its rapid disappearance in the digital world." --Denver Post

"[A] crazy, brilliant book/object of desire . . . Amazing."

--Anthony Bourdain
"S. comes alive, resonating incredibly . . . I found S. impossible to forget. . . . The kind of book that reminds one what books, at best, can be. You really must read it. And please: believe." --Tor.com

"This is a must-read for literary puzzle fans, even for those unfamiliar with Abrams's TV and film work."

--Publishers Weekly (starred)
"Opening S. feel[s] like uncovering a literary artifact."

---Los Angeles Times
"Both as literature and as a physical object, S. is a profound and tremendous work of art." (The Miami Herald).