Book Description

"Samuel R. Delany is not only one of the most profound and courageous writers at work today; he is a writer of seemingly limitless range." --Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of THE HOURS "A deeply affecting chronicle of a lifelong partnership, Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders is by turns generous, unsparing and bursting with life (and sex) in all its difficult, rousing, prismatic splendor. A truly staggering achievement, this moving novel underscores why Delany remains essential reading and why American letters would be the poorer without him." --Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao In 2007, days before his seventeenth birthday, Eric Jeffers meets nineteen-year-old Morgan Haskell, as well as half-a-dozen other gay men who live and work in Diamond Harbor. The boys become a couple, and for the next twenty years, labor as garbage men along the coast, sharing their lives and their lovers, learning to negotiate a committed open relationship. For a decade, they manage a rural movie theater that shows pornographic films and encourages gay activity among the audience. Finally, they become handymen for a burgeoning lesbian art colony on nearby Gilead Island, as the world moves twenty years, forty years, sixty years into a future that is fascinating, glorious, and--sometimes--terrifying. Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders is a near-future science fiction novel published in two volumes. "Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders is . . . one of the best novels by anyone that I have read in quite a long time. Indeed, I would go so far as to say (as I already put it on Twitter) that it is the best English-language novel that I know of, of the 21st century so far [2012]." --Steven Shaviro, DeRoy Professor of English, Wayne State University "An imposing and immersive novel punched me in the face, and kissed me, and filled my lungs this year. It is a deeply pornographic and sympathetic experience that disturbs (expect a barrage of all sorts of non-normative sex and a total re-evaluation of narrative structure), gratifies (expect an in-depth journey with a cast of characters that you will come to know and love in such a way you thought impossible in contemporary fiction), and enlightens . . . The importance of this book CANNOT be overstated. It is the best LGBT book that was published this year [2012], as well as the best book, period." --Lonely Christopher, author of Death and Disaster Series