The Fifth Head of Cerberus: Amazon.ca: Gene Wolfe: Books

Product Description

From Amazon

A brothel keeper's sons discuss genocide and plot murder; a young alien wanderer is pursued by his shadow double; and a political prisoner tries to prove his identity, not least to himself. Gene Wolfe's first novel consists of three linked sections, all of them elegant broodings on identity, sameness, and strangeness, and all of them set on the vividly evoked colony worlds of Ste. Croix and Ste. Anne, twin planets delicately poised in mutual orbit.

Marsch, the victim in the third story, is the apparent author of the second and a casual visitor whose naïve questions precipitate tragedy in the first. The sections dance around one another like the planets of their settings. Clones, downloaded personalities inhabiting robots, aliens that perhaps mimicked humans so successfully that they forgot who they were, a French culture adopted by its ruthless oppressors--there are lots of ways to lose yourself, and perhaps the worst is to think that freedom consists of owning other people, that identity is won at the expense of others.

It is easy to be impressed by the intellectual games of Wolfe's stunning book and forget that he is, and always has been, the most intensely moral of SF writers. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

"Gene Wolfe is unique. If there were forty or fifty of this first-rate author--no, let's be reasonable and ask Higher Authorities for only four or five--American literature as a whole would be enormously enriched." --"Chicago Sun-Times"
"One of the major fictional works of the decade...Wolfe's novel, with its elusiveness and its beauty, haunts one long after reading it." --Pamela Sargent
"A richly imaginative exploration of the nature of identity and individuality." --Malcolm Edwards, "The Science Fiction Encyclopedia"
"SF for the thinking reader..The style is highly literate and the ideas sophisticated and handled with sensitivity." --"Amazing SF"
"One of the 100 best science fiction novels...A truly extraordinary work. One of the most cunningly wrought narratives in the whole of modern SF, a masterpiece of misdirection, subtle clues, and apparently casual revelations." --David Pringle
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Product Description

Inside This Book (Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.

First Sentence
When I was a boy my brother David and I had to go to bed early whether we were sleepy or not. Read the first page

Explore More
Concordance

Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover

Tag this product

(What's this?)

Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items.

Customer Reviews

15 Reviews

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

Average Customer Review

4.4 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most helpful customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Wolfe is the best author alive, Feb 6 2002

By

5 Elements Style (Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Fifth Head of Cerberus: Three Novellas (Paperback)

When I originally read this book, I had trouble making it through the first of the three novellas. I wasn't prepared for Wolfe's many layers, and thus missed a great deal of symbolism and hidden meaning.

When I came back to this book and read the final two novellas, something clicked and I realized how beautiful and subtle a writer Wolfe is, filled with ideas. The stories are interpretable many ways, and thus with each reading of them I find myself thinking more and more, and enjoying the book more and more.

For anyone who is interested in the deeper meanings of Wolfe's works, I would suggest searching the Internet Public Library for criticism on him, specifically the Post-Colonial thought found throughout the novellas in Fifth Head of Cerberus.

Get this and all of Gene Wolfe's works.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Report abuse

4.0 out of 5 stars Now this is more like it!, Nov 9 2001

By

W.C. VandenBerg (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Fifth Head of Cerberus: Three Novellas (Paperback)

I liken another of Gene Wolfe's works, The Book of the New Sun, to the myriad pieces of a mosaic that have been jumbled and have no mortar to hold them together. There are pretty bits and pieces but no overall impression that emerges from it. The stories in The Fifth Head of Cerberus, however, are more like three paintings -- a triptych, as it were. Each brush stroke is thoughtfully applied, revealing only as much as Wolfe wants us to see. The synergism of the three stories -- between the slight overlaps of theme, character and location -- becomes entrancing.

The key to why this works is focus. Each tale has a unique story structure. Each of the three has a different voice and perspective. Symbolism and allusion are used sparingly and well, enmeshed with Wolfe's imagery to add depth to the stories. There is an attention to detail that fleshes out the stories convincingly, giving them a distinct sense of place.

In the title story, Wolfe describes a melancholy world of decaying grandeur where the humans make your skin crawl and the most sympathetic character is a machine.

The second tale is in some ways the strongest entry and in others the weakest. The imagery is lyrical and haunting, told in an intriguing folkloric style. I enjoyed the issues of identity and consciousness Wolfe raises, and the elliptical change in subject to convey these. But, unrelated to this theme, he peppers throughout the story awkward sentence structure and the use of vague pronouns. This seems to be intentional, as if Wolfe enjoys these little mental misdirections. It pulls me out of the experience of the story and so detracts from the work, though not greatly.

In my favorite of the three, Wolfe lets us peer over the shoulder of an officer and read the private journals of one of his prisoners, presenting them to us out of chronological order so that important hints are dropped in the most careful way, culminating in a clever conundrum: is he really what we think he is or merely mad from long confinement? It's rewarding fun to fit these puzzle pieces together.

All in all, Wolfe delivers enough of a payoff to be satisfying, and yet keeps the reader wanting more -- in just the correct proportions to be both entertaining and thought provoking.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Report abuse

5.0 out of 5 stars Enigmatic and Compelling, May 25 2000

By

Alex D. Groce (Pasadena, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Fifth Head of Cerberus: Three Novellas (Paperback)

Gene Wolfe seldom tackles genuinely "new" science-fictional ground. Clones, shapeshifters, colonized planets, genocide, "uploaded" intelligences, and the other SF tropes of this masterfully interwoven set of three novellas are often-visited ground. But only Wolfe brings the intensity of vision and nuanced, complex, evocative, winding prose of Proust, the nightmarish flagellation of the soul of Kafka, the moral clarity and sympathy of, well, Gene Wolfe to bear--not so much "talking about" these ideas as using these ideas to go deeper and to examine the nature of identity, self, guilt and knowledge. Wolfe is not guilty, however, of the sin of using his created worlds merely as metaphors for our current conditions; rather, Wolfe grounds his insights, which are universal, in the concrete conditions of a fictional reality, as only the best writers manage--to neither be idealistic nor materialist, but rather, Incarnational.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Report abuse

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 15 customer reviews on Amazon.ca

Want to see more reviews on this item?

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 37 reviews 4.5 out of 5 stars

Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Cave Canum
Gene Wolfe's _5th Head of Cerberus_ was originally published in 1972. The Orb Books / Tom Doherty Associates re-issue is paperbound on acid-free paper. Read more

Published on April 19 2000 by Stephen Hoy

5.0 out of 5 stars Subtle and thought-provoking
Wolfe delivers three unique tales spanning two planets, which examine the notion of identity. As always, the characterizations are subtle and convincing, and Wolfe leaves the... Read more

Published on April 7 2000