The Fifth Head of Cerberus

A finalist novel for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Stalker awards. Gene Wolfe’s novel consists of three interconnected parts, full of elegant reflections on self-identity, resemblance, and otherness. The setting is the vivid colonial worlds of San-Croix and Saint-Anne—twin planets balancing on a shared orbit. The sons of a bordel keeper discuss genocide and plot murder; a young alien wanderer is pursued by his double-shadow; a political prisoner tries to confirm his identity, and not least—his identity to himself. Clones loaded with robotic personalities, aliens that may have imitated people so successfully that they themselves forgot who they are—French culture of merciless colonizers—there are many ways to lose yourself, and the worst is to believe that freedom consists in possessing other people.
“Easy to get impressed by the intellectual game of this astonishing book and forget that it has always been the most morally upright of the fantasists.” — Amazon.co.uk
“This is an amazing book, filled with images and mysteries that leaves behind a painful feeling of sadness and anxiety, making you think and experience, come back and reread—trying to grasp the elusive mirages and hints.” — FantLab
“Gene Wolfe is unique. If there were forty or fifty such top-class authors—no, let’s be sensible and ask the Higher Authorities for only four or five—then all of American literature would be extremely enriched.” — Chicago Sun-Times
“One of the main works of art of the decade… Wolfe’s novel, with its elusive beauty, haunts a person long after you’ve finished reading it.” — Pamela Sargent
“A rich creative investigation into the nature of identity and individuality.” — Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
“Fantasy for the thinking reader… High-literature style, refined and carefully thought-out ideas.” — Amazing SF
“Gene Wolfe is the greatest of today’s English-language authors. Let me say it again: Gene Wolfe is the greatest of today’s English-language authors! I mean it. Shakespeare surpasses Wolfe as a stylist; Melville surpasses him in significance for the history of American literature; Dickens writes characters more virtuously. But among living authors, no one comes close to Wolfe in the splendor of his prose, clarity of ideas, and depth of meanings.” — Michael Swanwick
“If any of today’s novelists deserves to be called the Great Writer, it’s undoubtedly Wolfe… who reads like a blend of Dickens, Proust, Kipling, Chesterton, and Nabokov—then seasoned with influences from the most diverse fantasists, from Herbert Wells to Jack Vance, from H. P. Lovecraft to Damon Knight… In short, he is one of the best American writers… A modernist or postmodernist, a formal allegorist or an anatomist of the human soul—he is just a miracle, a true talent!” — Washington Post Book World
“Smart writers come in two types. Some show off their intelligence, and others don’t need to. Gene Wolfe belongs to the second kind; for him intelligence isn’t the main thing—the main thing is to tell the story. He’s not smart just to make you look foolish, but so that you can become smarter too.” — Neil Gaiman
“One of the 100 best science-fiction novels… Truly extraordinary work. One of the most cleverly constructed narratives in all of contemporary science fiction: a masterpiece of disorientation, subtle clues, and—apparently—random revelations.” — David Pringle
“Stylistically and literarily executed at the highest level; besides, it’s also a very, very frightening book.” — FantLab