Tlooth

A “comic extravaganza” (Washington Post Book World) from an acclaimed voice in twentieth century American literature, Tlooth follows its narrator on a fantastical, globe-trotting quest for revenge.

Opening on a baseball game in a Siberian prison camp, Harry Mathews’ second novel is absurdist from the jump, rife with all the arcane puzzles, digressions, and nested stories that would become hallmarks of his oeuvre. Tlooth’s narrator is a three-fingered dental assistant who escapes from Russia to seek revenge on the surgeon who took her other fingers: the criminal Dr. Evelyn Roak. Her pursuit takes her across half the world—from Kabul to Venice to Milan to India to Morocco to Rome to France—as Mathews constructs a labyrinth of language, delighting in each puzzle on the page.