V.

Thomas Pynchon · b. 1937 · USA

Why it matters

A discharged sailor drifts through 1950s New York while a former spy chases the century-spanning trail of a shape-shifting woman named V. through colonial massacres and Mediterranean intrigue. Pynchon's sprawling debut invents the paranoid-history quest whole.

At a glance

A double plot spanning decades and continents buries its patterns under dense historical digression.