The Raw Shark Texts

Steven Hall

Apr 2008 · Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

About this ebook

This genre-bending national bestseller is “a horror-dystopic-philosophical mash-up, drawing comparisons to Borges, The Matrix and Jaws” (The New York Times Magazine).
 
Eric Sanderson wakes up in a house he doesn’t recognize, unable to remember anything of his life. A note instructs him to call a Dr. Randle, who informs him that he is undergoing yet another episode of memory loss, and that for the last two years—since the tragic death of his great love, Clio, while vacationing in Greece—he’s been suffering from an acute dissociative disorder. But there may be more to the story, or it may be a different story altogether.
 
With the help of allies found on the fringes of society, Eric embarks on an edge-of-your-seat journey to uncover the truth about himself and escape the predatory forces that threaten to consume him. Moving with the pace and momentum of a superb thriller, exploring ideas about language and information, as well as identity, this is ultimately a novel about the magnitude of love and the devastating effect of losing that love.
 
“Paced like a thriller, it reads like a deluge . . . Herman Melville meets Michael Crichton, or Thomas Pynchon meets Douglas Adams.” —San Francisco Chronicle
 
“Rousingly inventive.” —The Washington Post
 
“Unforgettable fiction.” —Playboy
 
“A thriller that will haunt you.” —GQ
 
“Sharp and clear . . . Writing on the edge of the form.” —Los Angeles Times
 
“Huge fun, and I gleefully recommend it.” —Audrey Niffenegger, international–bestselling author of The Time Traveler’s Wife
 
“Fast, sexy, intriguing, intelligent.” —Toby Litt

Ratings and reviews

I learned about this book while searching for something that read similar to House of Leaves. I never really expected to be drawn into any story so completely as I had been with HOL, but this book was able to do that for me. It's excellent.

Creative. Vivid like a movie. The scariest scene of a book I've ever read, made my skin crawl, in a totally good way. Action and adventure. Finished it from a corner of a room full of friends I should have been talking to, because I couldn't bear to put it down.

This book is like nothing I have ever read. Suspenseful, intriguing, and clever. You will not be disappointed!

About the author

STEVEN HALL was born in 1975. He has produced a number of plays, music videos, concrete prose/conceptual-art pieces, and short stories, including “Stories for a Phone Book,” featured in New Writing 13. The subject matter of Hall's follow up to The Raw Shark Texts, to be published in 2010, is being kept closely under wraps. Hall lives in Hull, England.