Description

Voyage, Orestes! [a surviving novel fragment] by Samuel R. Delany

Trade Paperback – Bamberger Books – 2019 – 229 pages

Voyage, Orestes! was an ambitious novel started by Delany while at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference in 1960. Finished in 1963, it filled 1,056 pages of manuscript. He submitted it to several publishing companies, garnering praise and rejections. Eventually, the original copy was lost when his agent moved offices. A partial carbon of sections two through five (out of eighteen or so) was preserved, and that is what is published herein.

Writes Kenneth R. James in his Introduction: “Readers familiar with Delany’s published fiction will find, among the novel’s characters, prototypes for figures who will appear in Delany’s later published work.”