The Liar's Dictionary by Eley Williams

The Liar's Dictionary by Eley Williams

NATIONAL BESTSELLER * "You wouldn't expect a comic novel about a dictionary to be a thriller too, but this one is. In fact, [it] is also a mystery, love story (two of them) and cliffhanging melodrama." --The New York Times Book Review

An award-winning novel that chronicles the charming misadventures of a lovelorn Victorian lexicographer and the young woman put on his trail a century later to root out his misdeeds while confronting questions of her own sexuality and place in the world.

Mountweazel n. the phenomenon of false entries within dictionaries and works of reference. Often used as a safeguard against copyright infringement.

In the final year of the nineteenth century, Peter Winceworth is toiling away at the letter S for Swansby's multivolume Encyclopaedic Dictionary. But his disaffection with his colleagues compels him to assert some individual purpose and artistic freedom, and he begins inserting unauthorized, fictitious entries. In the present day, Mallory, the publisher's young intern, starts to uncover these mountweazels in the process of digitization and through them senses their creator's motivations, hopes, and desires. More pressingly, she's also been contending with a threatening, anonymous caller who wants Swansby's staff to "burn in hell." As these two narratives coalesce, Winceworth and Mallory, separated by one hundred years, must discover how to negotiate the complexities of life's often untrustworthy, hoax-strewn, and undefinable path. An exhilarating, laugh-out-loud debut, The Liar's Dictionary celebrates the rigidity, fragility, absurdity, and joy of language while peering into questions of identity and finding one's place in the world.

ELEY WILLIAMS is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is the author of Attrib. and Other Stories, and her work has appeared in The Penguin Book of the Contemporary British Short Story, Liberating the Canon, The Times Literary Supplement, and London Review of Books. She lives in London.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780593311868
ISBN 10	0593311868
Title	The Liar's Dictionary
Author	Eley Williams
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2021-11-09
Number of pages	288
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.