The Liar’s Dictionary

In the final year of the nineteenth century, Peter Winceworth is toiling away at the letter S for Swansbys multivolumeEncyclopaedic Dictionary. But his disaffection with his colleagues compels him to assert some individual purpose and artistic freedom, and he begins inserting unauthorized, fictitious entries. In the present day, Mallory, the publishers young intern, starts to uncover these mountweazels in the process of digitization and through them senses their creators motivations, hopes, and desires. More pressingly, shes also been contending with a threatening, anonymous caller who wants Swansbys staff to burn in hell. As these two narratives coalesce, Winceworth and Mallory, separated by one hundred years, must discover how to negotiate the complexities of lifes often untrustworthy, hoax-strewn, and undefinable path. An exhilarating, laugh-out-loud debut,The Liars Dictionarycelebrates the rigidity, fragility, absurdity, and joy of language while peering into questions of identity and finding ones place in the world.