More ImagesThe Book of the New Sun
Novel series by Gene Wolfe
The Book of the New Sun is a four-volume science fantasy novel written by the American author Gene Wolfe. The work is in four parts with a fifth novel acting as a coda to the main story. It inaugurated the "Solar Cycle" that Wolfe continued by setting other works in the same universe. It chronicles the journey of Severian, a journeyman torturer from the Order of the Seekers for Truth and Penitence, who after helping a client kill themselves is exiled in disgrace to journey to the distant city of Thrax where he is to live out his days as their executioner. Severian lives in the ancient city of Nessus in a nation called the Commonwealth, ruled by the Autarch, in the Southern Hemisphere. It is at war with Ascia, its totalitarian northern neighbor. It is a first-person narrative, ostensibly translated by Wolfe into contemporary English, set in a distant future when the Sun has dimmed and Earth is cooler. Wikipedia