Lavie Tidhar's work encompasses literary fiction (Maror, Adama, and the forthcoming Six Lives), cross-genre classics such as Jerwood Prize winner A Man Lies Dreaming, and World Fantasy Award winner Osama, as well as genre works like the Campbell and Neukom winner Central Station. He has also written comics (Adler), children's books such as Candy and A Child's Book of the Future and created the animated movie Loontown and webseries Mars Machines with Nir Yaniv.

The Escapement by Lavie Tidhar

In this dazzling new novel evoking Westerns, surrealism, epic fantasy, mythology, and circus extravaganzas, World Fantasy Award winner Lavie Tidhar (Central Station) has created an incomparable dreamscape of dark comedy, heartbreak, hope, and adventure. Chronicling a lone man's quest in parallel worlds, The Escapement offers the archetypal darkness of Stephen King's The Gunslinger within the dark whimsy of a child's imagination.

Into the Escapement rides the Stranger, a lone gunman on a quest to rescue his son in a strange parallel reality. But it is easy to lose one's way on an endlessly shifting, unpredictable landscape. Especially in a place full of dangerous mirror-images of a child's beloved things: lawless heroes, giants made of stone, downtrodden clowns, spectacular symbol storms, and an endless war between gods and shadowy beings.

As the Stranger has learned, the Escapement is a dreamscape of deep mysteries, unlikely allies, and unwinnable battles. Yet the flower the he seeks still lies beyond the Mountains of Darkness. Time is running out as the Stranger journeys deeper into the secret heart of an unimaginable world.

In his most compelling work to date, Lavie Tidhar has delivered a multicolored tapestry of dazzling imagery. The Escapement is an epic, wildly original chronicle of the extraordinary lengths to which one will go for love.

CURATOR'S NOTE

This is another one of my favourite books, a surrealist quest across a landscape populated by clowns, in which a desperate father searches for a mythical cure to save his son's life. It was only too late that I realised no one actually likes clowns. Which remains a mystery to me! But there you go. Ultimately, I think, it's a book with a heart – which is all that matters. – Lavie Tidhar

 

REVIEWS

  • "To say The Escapement is unique sells it way short. It's part weird western and part quest; half dream and half epic adventure tale set in a memorable Daliesque landscape. Tidhar lets his imagination run wild in this vivid book, all told in spare, beautiful prose."

    – Richard Kadrey, bestselling author of the Sandman Slim series

  • "A father wrangles with his impending grief in a steampunk, Wild West alternate universe in Lavie Tidhar's dazzling novel The Escapement . . . Those who enter the Escapement should strap themselves in for horrors and wonders galore. Filled with contorted fairy tales, myths, and familiar stories, Lavie Tidhar's latest novel is both a fantastical diversion and a moving articulation of deep parental love."

    – Foreword

  • "Lavie Tidhar is a voice to be reckoned with. With The Escapement, he fearlessly crests the wave of the New New Weird with a wild, decadent hybrid of The Dark Tower and Carnivale. A vivid beach read, if the beach was made of greasepaint and gunpowder."

    – Catherynne M. Valente, author of Deathless

  • "Comic, tragic, and utterly magnificent—a masterpiece of fantasy. Lavie Tidhar has crafted a wonderfully strange and surreal world in The Escapement, setting a liminal stage for both a gripping adventure and a poignant meditation on grief. I can't wait to read it again."

    – Samantha Shannon, author of The Priory of the Orange Tree
 

BOOK PREVIEW