About this item
A dizzying novel of deception and metempsychosis by the author of the National Book Award finalist Far NorthWhatever this is, it started when Nicholas Slopen came back from the dead.In a locked ward of a notorious psychiatric hospital sits a man who insists that he is Dr. Nicholas Slopen, failed husband and impoverished Samuel Johnson scholar. Slopen has been dead for months, yet nothing can make this man change his story. What begins as a tale of apparent forgery involving unknown letters by the great Dr. Johnson grows to encompass a conspiracy between a Silicon Valley mogul and his Russian allies to exploit the darkest secret of Soviet technology: the Malevin Procedure.Marcel Theroux's Strange Bodies takes the reader on a dizzying speculative journey that poses questions about identity, authenticity, and what it means to be truly human.
About the Author
Marcel (Raymond) Theroux is a British novelist and broadcaster. He is the older son of the American travel writer and novelist, . His younger brother, , is a journalist and television reporter. Born in Kampala, Uganda, Theroux was brought up in Wandsworth, London. After attending a state primary school he boarded at Westminster School. He went on to study English at Clare College of the University of Cambridge and international relations at Yale University. Currently he lives in London and is married. His French last name originates from the region around Sarthe and Yonne in France. It is quite common in Francophone countries and is originally spelled Théroux. His paternal grandfather was French Canadian. He wrote and for which he won the Somerset Maugham Award in 2002. His third novel, , was published by Faber in 2006. His fourth, , a future epic set in the Siberian taiga, was published in June 2009. He worked in television news in New York and Boston. In 2004 he presented part of the television series about climate change on Channel 4, for which he was chosen as presenter precisely because he initially knew nothing about the subject. He even had a preconception about environmentalists being spoilsports opposed to progress. But during his research he became convinced that we face a global problem, on a scale so serious that an expansion of nuclear energy is probably the best solution (choosing the lesser evil) . He reached this conclusion partly via the subjects of several interviews, amongst them Gerhard Bertz of insurance agency Munich Re, who indicated that in the past 20 years payments for natural disasters have increased by 500 percent. During another, with Royal Dutch Shell chairman Lord Ron Oxburgh, a PR assistant intervened to curtail the conversation, apparently because Oxburgh's negative views on the consequences of current oil consumption were considered detrimental to the corporation's image.In March 2006 Theroux presented on More4, as part of the series. In the program he explored the country's post-Soviet problems including population decline, the growing AIDS epidemic and the persecution of the Meskhetian Turks.On 28 September 2008 he presented on Channel 4 about how Russia's rich are keeping Russia's art history alive by buying, and exhibiting domestic art.On 16 March 2009, Marcel Theroux presented on BBC Four as part of the channel's season of programming. Marcel travelled throughout Japan trying to understand the aesthetic tastes of Japan and its people.
