V.

V. is a mysterious letter that appears here and there in the diary left by Stanley Stencil, who disappeared in 1919. In 1945, his son Herbert went to find out what was behind this initial. Very quickly, V. will prove to be an enigma with many meanings, a female figure with multiple faces - Victoria, an Englishwoman raped in Cairo; Vera, a German pre-Nazi dancer in South West Africa; Véronique, a female rat from the New York sewers; or a lesbian on the Boulevard de Clichy - but also a country called Vheissu, which worries the secret services a lot ...

Thomas Pynchon's first novel, an extravagant, unbridled story with an overflowing imagination, V. has been an immediate success since its publication in the early 60s and has placed its author among the very great of contemporary American literature.