"This work may well stand as one of the very best works of the
century." --Atlantic Review
Acclaimed writer Thomas Pynchon's wild, macabre tale of the twentieth
century and of two men--one looking for something he has lost, the other
with nothing much to lose--and "V.," the unknown woman of the title.
Pynchon's debut novel follows discharged Navy sailor Benny Profane as he
reconnects with an eclectic collection of artists in New York known as
the "Whole Sick Crew" along with his sidekick Pig Bodine, and the plot
of Herbert Stencil, looking to find the woman he knows only as she is
described in his father's diary: "V."
Brimming with madcap characters, the novel meanders from New York to
Alexandria, Cairo, Paris, Florence, and Africa, and traverses
generations. Time magazine raves, "Few books haunt the waking or the
sleeping mind, but this is one."