S.

"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."--Slipcase.

"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. It is also Abrams and Dorst's love letter to the written word."--Slipcase.

Altered book.

Issued in slipcase.

Title and statement of responsibility from slipcase.

Story told in marginalia to the book Ship of Theseus by the fictitious writer V.M. Straka, as well as in postcards and letters which can be removed from the book to be read.

Includes 23 items purporting to be documents concerning the "author," V.M. Straka, and his "translator," F.X. Caldeira from the Straka Arkiv; decoding wheel, map on a napkin, letters, postcards and notes by the "readers," Jennifer and Eric; and other related materials.

Marginalia printed in various colors.

"Bad Robot, Melcher Media."--Spine of box.

Title page and cover title of volume inside slipcase: Ship of Theseus / V.M. Straka. Imprint on title page: Winged Shoes Press, New York, 1949. Title page and page 3 of cover printed with "stamps" of Laguna Verde High School Library; spine includes a Dewey call number label (813.54 STR 1949).