Marina Dyachenko & Sergey Dyachenko - "Vita Nostra" (translated by Julia Meitov Hersey)

One of the most amazing books I have read in a long time.  Hints of Steven Hall's "The Raw Shark Text".

Even though the backflap or a review had hinted at the outcome, it was an amazingly capturing book where a girl gets somewhat unwittingly enrolled in a "university of special skills" and slowly deconstructs herself by reading impossible texts, doing impossible mental exercises, to finally emerge as a Word from the Speech.

Here they are, eating and drinking. They are still almost entirely human; they have human psyches and human bodies. With time, during the learning process, they will come out of their human skin and become Words, tools of Speech, the bones of tendons of a highly complex text that is called reality. Words know no fear, and no death. Words are free and conform only to Speech. And Speech – Sasha knew this! – is the core of harmony.

Steven Hall - "The Raw Shark Texts"

Loved this book, it blew me away. It was funny, great writing, and an amazing story to the likes of "The End of Mr Y" and "Neverwhere".

There were a few issues with the notion of conceptual fish and its conceptual world. In particular, the boat and how everything changed seemed sometimes a tad too easy... and yet it made sense on a fundamental level so deep that there are no proper words for it.

It was so good that I dread opening, nay, even picking out, a new book to read next.

Some amazing metaphores.

"The Orpheus was listing strongly now, the starboard side several feet nearer the water than the port and the mast pointing to five past the hour. It made matters worse that the winching arm was fixed to starboard and when we lowered the cage down over the side it added another minute to the ticking-away mastclock."

"I wanted to say, No, really, and explain how Ian really wasn't a getting-to-know-you type of cat or even a caual-hello kind of cat, more a sort of whirlwind made of blades."

(about his deceased-girlfriend's family)
"I know I probably won't see any of her family again. It's just too hot and too sharp and we'll only cut ourselves on each other if we try to stay in touch."