The Book of Lost Books

Stuart Kelly

An incomplete history of all the great books you will never read.

The Book of Lost Books is an alternative history of literature that begins with the earliest men and, ranging from Homer and the Bible to Sylvia Plath and William Burroughs, ends with the entropic heat-death of the Universe. Each of the entries describes a work of literature that, for various reasons, cannot be read: it may have been destroyed, or left incomplete at the author's death, or may never even have been started.

Books are destroyed by fire, water, internment, apathy, madness, a crocodile and prejudice. There are mathematical puzzles and magic symbols, quack prophets, a novel written entirely without the letter 'e' and an encyclopaedia that was logically impossible to write. Despite the undercurrents of loss, cultural extinction and the ubiquity of Death, it is a celebratory book, revelling in the oddities and haphazard chances that comprise the history of writing. For the lost book, like the person you never dared ask to the dance, becomes infinitely more alluring simply because it remains perfect only in the imagination ...

Stuart Kelly was born in 1972 and is a regular book reviewer for Scotland on Sunday and Poetry Review. He lives in Edinburgh with his wife. This is his first book.