The Book of the New Sun
Overview
 
The Book of the New Sun is a novel in four parts written (1980–83) by science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 and fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...

 author Gene Wolfe
Gene Wolfe
Gene Wolfe is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He is noted for his dense, allusive prose as well as the strong influence of his Catholic faith, to which he converted after marrying into the religion. He is a prolific short story writer and a novelist, and has won many awards in the...

. It chronicles the journey and ascent to power of Severian
Severian
Severian is the narrator and main character of Gene Wolfe's four-volume novel The Book of the New Sun, as well as its sequel, The Urth of the New Sun. He is a Journeyman of the Guild of Torturers who is exiled after showing mercy to one of his clients.Severian claims to have perfect memory...

, a disgraced journeyman
Journeyman
A journeyman is someone who completed an apprenticeship and was fully educated in a trade or craft, but not yet a master. To become a master, a journeyman had to submit a master work piece to a guild for evaluation and be admitted to the guild as a master....

 torturer who rises to the position of Autarch, the one ruler of the free world. Severian, who claims that he has perfect memory
Eidetic memory
Eidetic , commonly referred to as photographic memory, is a medical term, popularly defined as the ability to recall images, sounds, or objects in memory with extreme precision and in abundant volume. The word eidetic, referring to extraordinarily detailed and vivid recall not limited to, but...

, tells the story in first person
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...

; the books are presented by Wolfe as a translation of Severian's writings into contemporary English.
Quotations

His yellow eyes held a certain clean madness.

Severian, in Chapter 3: Triskele, paragraph 9

[T]he authority that punishes no one while there exists a chance for reformation will punish everyone when there is no possibility anyone will become the better for it.

Chatelaine Thecla, in Chapter 8: The Conversationalist, paragraph 8

By the use of the language of sorrow I had for the time being obliterated my sorrow—so powerful is the charm of words, which for us reduces to manageable entities all the passions that would otherwise madden and destroy us.

Severian, in Chapter 24: The Flower of Dissolution, section 3, paragraph 1

To those who have preceded me in the study of the posthistoric world, and particularly to those collectors—too numerous to name here—who have permitted me to examine artifacts surviving so many centuries of futurity, and most especially to those who have allowed me to visit and photograph the era's few extant buildings, I am truly grateful.

Appendix: A Note on the Translation

We were one, naked and happy and clean, and we knew that she was no more and that I still lived, and we struggled against neither of those things, but with woven hair read from a single book and talked and sang of other matters.

Severian (and Chatelaine Thecla), in Chapter 11: Thecla, final paragraph

One who truly benefits another is for that moment at a level with the Pancreator, and in gratitude for that elevation will serve the other all his days...

Serverian,

The brown book I carry says there is nothing stranger than to explore a city wholly different from all those one knows, since to do so is to explore a second and unsuspected self. I have found a thing stranger: to explore such a city only after one has lived in it for some time without learning anything of it.

Severian, in Chapter 2: Upon the Cataract, paragraph 2

That was the brightest day I've ever seen. The sun had new life in him, the way a man will when he was sick yesterday and will be sick tomorrow, but today he walks around and laughs so that if a stranger was to come he'd think there was nothing wrong, no sickness at all, that the medicines and the bed were for somebody else.

Casdoe's father,

 
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