It's not "mind-blowing" by today's standards, but "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" was pretty revolutionary for its time. Many describe it as postmodernism 200 years before postmodernism. It's his autobiography, but there are chapters out of order, the preface is in the middle, he speculates about what the cover of his book might look like and so there's just pages of marbled patterns, he gets writer's block or just forgets to write for a while (can't quite remember which) and it results in a series of blank pages, it's quite bawdy...all sorts of things. The writing style and "pop culture references" from the 1700s may not resonate with many modern readers, but if you like this sort of playing with form and pushing the limits on what a book can be and do, Tristam Shandy is a great early example of an author playing around with those exact same questions.

@Daniel-wi6sk

Ай бұрын

And an autobiography that starts not with the day the author/narrator was born, but by the night he was conceived… that has to be a very special book, a quite extraordinary book. Not to mention that we witness the dialogue taking place between the parents during the « act » of conception itself, with its supposed (negative) consequences on the life of the narrator…

@michaelgrosberg2665

Ай бұрын

He doesn't get to his own birthday until the third volume because he keeps getting sidetracked. Then at some point he plots his narrative in graph form for every volume so far to show he's getting less sidetracked in more recent volumes.

@mrwittyone

Ай бұрын

This"unfilmable novel" was turned into pretty good film called Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, starring Steve Coogan.

@lulujones

20 күн бұрын

Shoutout to Uncle Toby!!!!

I love when writers really do just decide to do the strangest things to test their craft and it's even better when it creates something really unique

The really hard thing abut avoiding "e" (an assignment I give my students to challenge them to consider every word in a short passage with great care) is not using the most common word in the English language -- "the" (ss you can see from this sentence).

@phon1x1

Ай бұрын

For non English speaker - it’s quite an easy task. Seriously, I have no idea why do you guys need “the”.

@Dr_Larken

Ай бұрын

Or the o?! Like in about, abut

@theelysium1597

Ай бұрын

Also not being able to use "be" is hard, too. In German avoiding "e" is also difficult, but by no means as difficult as in English, I feel like.

@Multi_Purpose_Weirdo

Ай бұрын

I can avoid that symbol but it is difficult to do. In past months I satisfy my linguistic cravings with horror books.

Stanislaw Lem: "The perfect vacuum". A collection of reviews of books that do not exist. Very funny.

@user-gf3fg5go1s

Ай бұрын

Yes thats a great book. As well as "imaginäre Größe" (translated to imaginary size) containing forewords to books that dont exist.

@nl3064

Ай бұрын

I loved Lem's Solaris. That's my contribution to this conversation.

@muesique

Ай бұрын

Der Futurologische Kongreß! No LSD needed! 😏

@nl3064

Ай бұрын

@@muesique I liked the movie version of The Congress.

I love these kinds of books with meta-fictional elements. Great list. One of my favorites is a book called "My Tired Father" by Romanian surrealist Gellu Naum. It's an autobiography written by doing Burroughs style cut-ups of American magazines. It starts out reading like just random aphorisms but as you keep reading you start to the see the outline of a life in the random fragments of sentences. Also, Calvino was a member of the Oulipo group, a literary group still around today technically which focused on the idea that constraints fuel creativity. They made a lot of really random books based on crazy constraints like "A Void" by Perec that is a lipogramatic book which means it's written without the use of a letter, in this case E. The book is also about finding the missing letter!

Another recommendation I’ll add to the rest - Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine, which is a very heavily footnoted stream-of-consciousness retelling of a lunch break. The footnotes have footnotes; it’s a wonderful representation of a non-linear experience accomplished in such a linear medium.

@nicholasbeutler3126

Ай бұрын

God, there is just so much good stuff out there. Put this one on my TBR as well. Thanks! 🙏🏻

In the comics of "Mr Invincible" (Imbattable), the hero knows that he is in a comic and jumps around between panels creating strange timeloops. But that's not all: there are people walking 'backwards' through the panels, portal away and there is even a hole in one of the pages that is incorporated into the story. (Writer: P. Jousselin) Another book for this video is 'Ella Minnow Pea' by Mark Dunn. His story takes place on an island where there are letters hung up that make a sentence using every letter of the alphabeth once. One day, a letter falls down. From then on, that letter is never used again in the text of the book. Soon other letters follow, restricting the letters that are still used in the rest of the text. The people try to use other words to get around not using the fallen letters, but that gets more difficult as the story proceeds.

@TheGhostRhythms

Ай бұрын

Yes it's really great

Hopscotch (Rayuela in spanish) is one of the most famous books in the Spanish language, it is often a recommended read in high school in many countries. I read it when I was a teen and still one of my favourite books. Totally recommended.

As reading material they don't appeal to me, but as an artist I support and applaud anyone who pursues their dreams. I am always fascinated to know 'what' people's dreams are.

I own and have read "Godel, Escher, Bach - An Eternal Golden Braid." "Metamagical Themas" is a thicker book by the same writer. Hofstadter used to write for "Scientific American," which is where I became acquainted with him. I had to buy both books and read them cover to cover more than once. I might just pull them from the shelf and read them again. I don't have any of the other books, but I have downloaded a PDF of "Cain's Jawbone" so I can have a crack at the mystery. I'm very good at solving puzzles.

These all sound intriguing. Thanks for introducing them

Thank you for this video! I had only heard of a few of these, and now I've got all of them in my "might read this someday" list.

Interesting, there are a few titles I didn’t know. Just a comment from a French native speaker : there is in French a famous “lipogramme en E” called “La disparition”, from author Georges Perec a 250 page book. On one level “La disparition” deals with the disappearance of the letter E itself. On another level, more hidden and complex, La disparition also refers to the disappearance of Perec’s parents in the nazi concentration camps. The name Perec contains only the vowel E…

@maciekkochanowicz7015

Ай бұрын

Perec is definitely a miss on this list. Not only "La disparition", but even more so "La vie mode d'emploi", which came to my mind, when he was reviewing "253".

My favorite Lipogram book is Ella Minnow Pea. :)

Fantastic video! I’m so glad I discovered your channel. I’ve written down every one of the books that you’ve mentioned, because they all sound fascinating. I’ve actually read S years ago and was blown away. Looking forward to chipping away at the others.

good video with good production and great explanations, def subscribing!

Great content! Thanks so much for taking the time to share this.

I have no idea how I landed on this channel as I fell asleep watching something else yet woke up a few hours later with this playing on my screen. Serendipity! I was immediately hooked on the description of these books! Thank you, I will definitely read a few of these. New sub 😁

Oh no! Another book tube channel that’s going to cost me lots of money! That fatal combination of great reviews of fascinating sounding books. It’s money and time well spent though, so thanks. I subscribed.

I was very surprised to find Gödel, Escher and Bach included here, as it's in no way a novel - which I believe the other entries all aspire to be. But I'm very glad it's included because it's one of my all-time Favorite books, and one of the most beautifully conceived and original books I've ever come across. It is such an eclectic book and served as my introduction to a wide range of ideas, especially the Incompleteness Theorem, which I believe to be a foundational concept with broad application beyond the sciences. I was also introduced to Zen koans, the concept of Strange Loops, and I gained a much deeper appreciation of what Bach was up to. I read it shortly after it came out, around 1980, I believe, and it left a deep impression. I had to skip much of the math as it got denser, so I definitely didn't absorb all that it offered. But there are few books, if any, that gifted me more. I consider it an amazing synthesis and a true work of art!

this was interesting, entertaining, and really well made. Keep making high quality stuff!

Thanks for this. I really like your direct, concise style, got a new sub today.

Thank you, great video!

As an author - this list is goddamn inspiring. Will be going through all of them, thank you so much for making this video! In one of my stories, I wrote an entire chapter that did not have verbs (it was necessary for that specific chapter) and I felt pretty proud of that - but seeing the genius at play in this list of books... I want to go back and recraft it :D Thanks again!

To the list can be added: the works of Georges Perec, Raymond Queneau, Laurence Sterne, Jan Potocki and many others. Mindblowing prose indeed, but it asks for a different mindset and reading-attitude.

@jman7826

Ай бұрын

I would add Flann O’Brien

@nomorenames5568

Ай бұрын

Yea the Oulipo are entirely about these sorts of books. I love Queneau, Excercises in Style is such a good book to read before writing. Also his sonnet "A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems" is a truly amazing feat.

@DavidLettvin

23 күн бұрын

Potocki's "Manuscript found at Saragossa" is absolutely extraordinary. I have lent out several copies and recently had to order a replacement. They never get returned. The nesting stories can reach insane depths.

Thanks for this video and thanks to everyone who responded with more recommendations. The only one of these that I've read is Pale Fire, which was also my introduction to the notion of an unreliable narrator. I feel like I ought to have a recommendation to offer - at the moment the only thing I can think of is the Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. It's less Literary (note the capital L) than the offerings here, but it's lots of fun and it answers our questions about what the characters of a novel do in their time off.

Recommended: Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban, a post-apocalptic novel written in a "de-evolved" form of English that has a dictionary of the language included...

Cool list! Italo Calvino - Cosmicomics The Kamikaze Mind - Richard James Allen Tree of Codes - Jonathan Safran Foer

Surprised a video like this didn't include the Princess Bride!

I first learned about Cain's Jawbone through a brief comment in a Grand Illusions video where Tim didn't even give the title. After a fair amount of research I managed to get more details for the book, and tracked down a copy of the original book (this was a few years before the reprint was published). I was so excited to get cracking on such an Interesting puzzle! Unfortunately, I found it completely impenetrable. I couldn't even figure out how to get started. IIRC the original printing of the book has even less information to go on than you gave in this video.

Fascinating exploration of the creative mind.

killer list and topic, thanks

I went into this thinking about how it would be criminal if Hopscotch wasn’t included. Glad to see it on the list 😊

I absolutely loved your production quality and presentation (killed it!) and I'm certainly going in for all of these. Have read House of Leaves (and it's an all time favorite), have a copy of the Calvino one (some of my friends have been almost begging me to read Winter's Night for some time now), and have been eyeing the Cain's Jawbone, Pale FIre, and the Abrams one for months now. Have you heard of XX by Rian Hughes? I've got the book, yet to read it, but saw it being recommended in a whole lot of forums while reading about House of Leaves. PS. You got a new subscriber! :)

@nicholasbeutler3126

Жыл бұрын

Thanks so much Amritesh, really much appreciated! :) XX was actually on my wider list of potential books for this video, so I'm sure at some point I'll do a part two. 😁 x

I had “Gödel, Escher, Bach” back in the ‘80s. It was fascinating.

@rogerkearns8094

Ай бұрын

I still have it.

@TheLindarosewood

Ай бұрын

He wrote I Am A Strange Loop to explain more explicitly the themes supported by all that number theory and fictional dialogues of GEB. That later book is also a meditation on love, grief, and a secular definition of “soul.” A masterpiece.

I'm so glad you had GEB on this list...I would recommend the follow-on by Hofsteadler (sp) "Le Ton Beau De Marot" which points to plenty other mind bending books...if you liked GEB, you'll enjoy this as well, well I hope. And thanks for this list!

Thanks for the recommendation !

I had already included "Gödel, Escher, Bach" in my read list, but only because it seemed like a book that dove into Gödel's incompleteness theorem, which is a subject I'm fascinated about. When I saw this book in your list I shivered. Definitely gonna read it now, knowing what it really is about

@nicholasbeutler3126

Ай бұрын

Better brace yourself for a wild ride :D

I have read the Calvino, and I own copies of the Nabokov and Cortazar. I will be added to my list!

I love this!

Reading ergodic literature, like Ship of Theseus, was an enjoyable experience. I am compelled to reread Ship of Theseus.

There's a really striking one called _A Humument,_ by the artist Tom Phillips. It's basically an old victorian novel where Philips has drawn over most of the text on every page, with the remaining words forming new meanings. It's a really fascinating hybrid between an art book and a poetry collection.

Excellent and much needed explanations for these intriguing books! By the way, for those taking on G.E.B. ... On my second read-through I found a hidden self-referencial message in the dialogue from Ch. 3. Happy reading. 🤨

@nicholasbeutler3126

Ай бұрын

Kudos to you for reading through that behemoth twice 😂

Thank you for this intriguing compilation. I know only 3 books from the list

I would love to read a book like these some day :D

Maybe already popped up in another comment; you may want to check "Dictionary of the Khazars" by Milorad Pavic. He wrote the story through dictionary entries, well, actually four dictionaries, where the references and calls between entry tell different versions of the same story. Quite a treat :)

@nicholasbeutler3126

Ай бұрын

Put it on my list! Love all of these recommendations in the comments so far. :)

Awesome video!!! ❤❤❤

@nicholasbeutler3126

Ай бұрын

Thank you :)

The fact that the first book on the list is my favourite book, that's a promising start.

I've read Gödel, Escher and Bach, it's a truly beautiful book but i honestly don't think I would've made it if I weren't a math major, the math is only about 20 or 30% of the book, but it's really dense, although the author does an excellent job of explaining it. I definitely would recommend it to any reader interested in maths and computer science and up to a challenge. It took me three months to digest it, but to be fair I'm also a slow reader.

@nicholasbeutler3126

Ай бұрын

I am not a math major and boy did that take out the fun at times... 😂

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn is an epistolary set in a town that reveres the pangram "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog," but, when the 'z' falls off the memorial statue, the town elders ban use of the letter. Since the book is an epistolary, as more letters fall off the book becomes progressively lipogrammatic, and I recommend it as a read

My short story collection includes stories created by my mind in two conditions - sleep and awake. There's qr code at the end of the book which leads to web site i created. There you can try to guess which stories based on dreams. Not the same but wanted to share my concept with someone 😅 I worked so much on it but only one person read in a year😭

Dont forget : Robert Pirsig - Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance Daniel Quinn - Ishmael Vladimir Megre - Ringing Cedars series

@nicholasbeutler3126

Ай бұрын

Great, just put all of these on my TBR list! Thanks!

Excellent list, weird fiction is my favorite genre!

Some of these books sound harder than my entire university degree studies!! 👀😊

The Raw Shark Texts by Stephen Hall would fit nicely on this list.

_The Uncanny_ by Nicholas Royle stands out as a really interesting example because it's an academic book, mostly about literary theory. It's less out there than most of the books you list, but the way it's structured and the content is really out there considering what it is.

I'm a fan of conceptual art and literature, even oulipo. Among my favourites are Walter Abish and Georges Perec.

Opened the video just because I knew Calvino’s book would be here. Maybe it’s time to read it again :)

That video was so mind opening about the "current" developments of literature! I want to read them all! Now I'll try to find more videos like that

House of Leaves is a clever, weird, multi-layered masterpiece. It is one of my favorite haunted house stories, every bit as worthy as Haunting of Hill House, The Shining, and Hell House. Recently I read a haunted house book called Episode Thirteen that was a lot of fun. It reminded me of the movie Grave Encounters.

Great image placement 0:55 :)

These remind me of a YA book I read a bit back. Sci-fi, possibly sci-fi horror. it was called The Illuminae Files iirc, and was presented as a series of medical reports, military files, journal entries, dialogue and CCTV transcripts, emails, and text messages, all set on a trio of spaceships fleeing from a corporate warship out to destroy them. It was really neat, part of a trilogy.

I was about to pause and say "you have to read 253 by Geoff Ryman!" and then read your notes and realised you were getting to that.

Nice!

One of the most mind-bending books I have ever read is _The Illuminatus! Trilogy_ by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. It's a difficult read which requires a lot of concentration to keep up with the narrative, but I found it quite good. As an example, at one point it switched the narrative from a male protagonist in the third person to a female protagonist in the first person and seven years earlier _mid-sentence._ The story itself revolves (as the title might suggest) around various conspiracy theories and is quite humorous.

@nicholasbeutler3126

Ай бұрын

That sounds crazy tbh. But I'm all up for these kind of concepts! 😄

@allonszenfantsjones

19 күн бұрын

Don't know the name of it, but I remember a book I started and I got halfway through when I realized holy moly every single chapter leads you to think that you're going to find resolution, or even the continuation of the narrative, until you realize that no, a new story has been started that again will not resolve. with the same main character! Arghhh! Takes place in an apocalyptic Russian neighborhood as I recall, complete with crumbling housing blocks.

Very interesting. Maybe I should reread Gödel, Escher, Bach. The only other one I had heard of is If a Winter Night a Traveller.

Great Video! I can think of another: Impossible Landscapes, a campaign of the ttrpg Delta Green. The main "villain" is an entropic force that latches especially on the arts and artist, like a reality virus replacing theirs. The book's layout gets more and more fragmented and weird as you go. Words are crossed, written backwords, repeated - and just enough to make you wonder everytime. the layout itself, and its borders/colours get the same treatment. (in the story is a dangerous sign that can prime you and its highlighted in the book every time its mentioned. ) the thing that really makes it ergodic is that all things are linked in a subtle way that you have to read it at least twice to get most and than you have to read careful to get all clues and weird coincidences (unrelated things happen at the same time, unrelated people having the same last name. it also plays with time as the force in the book seems to transcend it, people appearing out of time in places they shouldnt be). its surreal horror and the book itself cleverly shows that. and if you read the stories this campaign is based on, you will even find more clues and truths, like you can never fully understand it all. I have never read a book that goes about surreality in such a clever way. defying expectations what a ttrpg book should be. no surprise that it is considered an enormous effort to even prepare and run this one. (i am doing atm)

@nicholasbeutler3126

Ай бұрын

Love this, Thanks so much. Will definitely look further into this!!

@otakuofmine

Ай бұрын

@@nicholasbeutler3126 oh that would be interesting to hear here!

I’d like to see an honorary mention here for “Venus on a Half-shell” by Kilgore Trout, who was a fictional character in many of Kurt Vonnegut’s novels. Also, maybe a mention for Sophie’s World, also a kind of philosophical adventure story, going meta and un-meta at various points in the story. About Douglas Hofstadter’s masterpiece: I feel that much more could be said about it. I have all his works on my bookshelf, and my favourite is “Le Ton Beau de Marot” about translation in general and about translating poetry from French to English in particular, although it is much much more than that as one would expect from Hofstadter… The only other one I have is Gadsby, which is a little weird to read, as you would expect!

Infinite Jest deserves to be included in this list, or at least be an honorable mention.

@nicholasbeutler3126

Ай бұрын

That book is just so big, I haven't gotten around reading it. 😅

@4:52. A line with a quite accurate description of me.

I just started reading XX by Rian Hughes and feel it deserves a shoutout for this list as well.

I appriciate unique and novel video games. So I'm glad YT recommended me this video.

@nicholasbeutler3126

26 күн бұрын

Which games can you recommend? 😁

New York Collapsed was the first time I encountered a concept like Ship Of Theseus, where there’s another book in the margins

@nicholasbeutler3126

Ай бұрын

Great, will put that on my list. Thanks :)

Dan Rhodes "Anthropology" might also fit here. B.S. Johnson did some interesting things although his best is his most straightforward "Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry". And someone already mentioned "The Mezzanine"...

Amazing collection, thanks for introducing them to me. not heard of any of them before. Looking forward to reading them. Cheers

@mixolydian2010

Ай бұрын

The only book i have come across like these is a book called The Perilous Adventures of an Unfulfilled Full Stop by Jim Barrass. Not in print any more. Have all the books you listed on amazon wish list and will get them soon. Thanks again.

man i wanna read all of them!

We Appy Few is a great book to read. Its the story of a hundred year old man who tells the young Henry 8th what really happened at the battle of Agincourt. Its funny, touching, and debates the nature of reality, truth, language and history.

I would recomend Ella Minnow Pea as a book in a fun, weird style. Within the story a there is an island with a monument containing the phrase "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" and one of the letters falls off and the rulers of the island decide that the citizens of the island arent allowed to use that letter anymore spoken or written or else theyll get thrown in jail. And since the book itself is a series of letters between characters, the letters that fall stop showing up in the book. Its very good.

10:00 everyone I knew in 1990 read Gödel, Escher, Bach - first-semester philosophy, math, music theory and physics. Something about Schrodinger's cat and an eternal crescendo. Not recommended, it goes all over the place and doesn't leave a lasting impression. 253 and hopscotch do sound rather intriguing.

These are all challenging books. Aside from Pale Fire, all are new to me. I wonder, though, why to skip Laurence Sterne's wonderful book Tristram Shandy. It is a puzzle, perhaps on the cusp of bring a metanovel.

@barrymoore4470

2 ай бұрын

American critic Jonathan Rosenbaum argues that 'Tristram Shandy' is still the greatest of all experimental novels--it was postmodern before modernism was even a thing.

@snowmonster42

Ай бұрын

I had no idea . . . I've toyed with reading this for a long time mostly because it's a novel that comes up in so many other novels. I'll give it a try.

@nl3064

Ай бұрын

He can't mention every single goddam off-beat book ever written. I know Tristram is a classic, but why is every third comment some prck who automatically assumes their favorite just _has_ to be mentioned?

@snowmonster42

Ай бұрын

@@nl3064 I actually think we all realize that. The comments are where people can suggest their own favorites for those who are interested. You don't have to be interested. I'm not sure what you were expecting, but you might want to retreat into a copy of Pride and Prejudice until you feel better. That always helps me when I feel cranky.

@greggi47

Ай бұрын

@@nl3064 Many of us pricks know and enjoy books and authors that aren't mentioned in such "recommended" lists and want more people to read and share the pleasures they give. Just as this one told me about unfamiliar titles that I want to know more about.

You should probably do a part two to this video. Nice vid thought.

@nicholasbeutler3126

Ай бұрын

Will definitely happen in the future. :)

Until we remember we are a spirit having a human experience we’re pretty much an amnesiac. Subscribed! Thank you for sharing your weird life.

Not me stumbling across this video the same day as my House of Leaves copy gets delivered (after two months of placing the order).

Going through House of Leaves and Truants sections are so hard to get through. Overall enjoying it though

@brycecartwright2403

Ай бұрын

They have a great payoff if you stick with them, and I also recommend skimming any parts of Johnny rambling and not mentioning any actual characters as they don’t make literal sense but are there to create a mood of insanity and paranoia

@spectrem

Ай бұрын

@@brycecartwright2403 yeah I just started skipping paragraphs once it is clear that he is rambling

House of Leaves was pub. in 2000. HIDING by Mark Johnson was pub in 1997 and did the same thing, but not fiction.

Try 'the orphan Master's son' by Adam Johnson. No spoilers but I have to say I'm 288 pages in and I still haven't figured it out. Also I can only read five pages at a time before I have to put it down. Some of the most elegant phraseology, too. Descriptive af.

A book that comes to mind is ‘Dr Awkward & Olson in Oslo’ where the whole novel is a palindrome, so reads the same backwards as it does forwards (as you can see with the title).

Pale Fire was being read by the protagonists in Blade Runner 2049, I think.

If you want a children's book in this genre, check out "The Book That Did Not Want To Be Read" by David Sundin (originally in Swedish).

@SimonHuggins

Ай бұрын

Sophie's World was aimed at children too - a book about famous philosophers inside a mystery was the intention, although upon re-reading recently I found it tedious, a bit chauvanistic, and annoyingly missed out some of the most important philosophers because (I suspect) they didn't fit his narrative - so a bit too preachy. Shame - loved it when I was a kid though.

I remember hearing about a play that was literally impossible to represent, because it only used abstract concepts and didn't have "characters" per se. I don't remember the name though, I would appreciate if anyone here knows. I've been looking for it for a while :/

I like pale fire, but its important to say it is actually american-russian writer and Pale Fire was written in English.

The Atrocity Exhibition could be in this list

You should read "Vitruvia 144". It basically brings about the end of reality.

@nicholasbeutler3126

Ай бұрын

Sounds super interesting! Thanks.

Ella Minnow Pea is my favourite book of this kind - it's short and funny and not only is it epistolary (written as a series of letters) but it also become increasingly lipogrammatic, dropping more and more letters as it goes on

@nicholasbeutler3126

Ай бұрын

Cool, I will put that on my reading list!

No letter "e" is a lipogram, not to be confused with no versions of the verb "is" (am/will be/was/to be/etc.), which is called E-prime.

What about Ishiguro’s ‘The Unconsoled’? A huge novel in which things are always just about to happen, but never do. How he keeps the thing going for so long is as staggering as it is frustrating.

@nicholasbeutler3126

Ай бұрын

That sounds rad. But it on my TBR list! Thanks. :)

The book "S" reminds me of real life version of Journal 3 from Gravity Falls

I could be wrong, but I think Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress doesn’t use the definite article: the.

You may like Embassytown, by China Miéville (I won't give any spoilers)

You might find Dictionary of the Khazars interesting.