S.: Ship of Theseus

S. is a narrative experiment realized in the form of a physical book. On the surface it is an old book titled Ship of Theseus, published in 1949, with a library catalog label on the spine, a borrowing record at the back, yellowed pages covered with coffee stains and mildew. The book's author, V. M. Straka, is a man of mystery: for decades researchers have put forward all sorts of conjectures about him; it is said that he vanished while writing the ending in a small hotel, leaving manuscripts scattered across the floor, the tenth chapter missing, and bloodstains by the window. The novel's main text tells of a man who wakes on a mysterious large ship with no memory, remembering only the image of an enigmatic woman, and decides to find her; bizarre crew members take him on voyages that seem purposeless yet repeatedly foreshadow his fate. In the blank margins, multicolored handwritten annotations fill the pages. At first they are pencil notes left by literature graduate student Eric, who took Ship of Theseus as his thesis topic; later Jenna, a senior about to graduate, picks up the book from a library shelf and cannot resist replying in writing, and the two converse back and forth across the pages. As the annotations accumulate layer upon layer, they discover that a cry for help from Straka seems hidden between the lines, and that the mysterious figure threatening the writer has also set his sights on these two readers; more unsettling still, a third person's handwriting, signed only with the letter “S,” appears in the margins. The book also includes 23 inserts of various materials, including letters, postcards, telegrams, newspaper clippings, photographs, notes, napkins, a compass and more, which are both first-hand evidence left by the characters and clues for readers to join the puzzle. The simplified Chinese edition was overseen throughout by designer Lu Zhichang, with the format, background color and the progression of handwriting in each chapter matched to the original; it was reproduced through more than twenty processes including spot-color printing, embossing, debossing, foil stamping, die-cutting and rivet binding, and is therefore regarded as an “object-book” to be collected rather than lent out.