Minus sapiens

A man who may or may not be the film director Werner Herzog, and who also goes by the name of the Marquis de Gilgame, travels back to the 16th century to shadow Michel de Montaigne on the journey to Italy through Switzerland and Germany in 1580 and 1581 that Montaigne recorded in his travel journal. In one reality Montaigne follows his journal; in another, Herzog shoots a documentary about the waters, fountains, springs and baths found along the way. In this experimental novel, characters talk in languages they don't know and remember things they shouldn't, surreal moments break into the middle of sentences, and words are crossed out and written again on the page, as the book turns over memory and forgetting, identity, glitches in perception, a world that exists without us, and death.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

167 pages in the original

Genres

Speculative (assigned by AI)

Set in

France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, 1580–1581

First published

2017 by OceanMore

ISBN

9789533320571 (original)