In a distant universe, since the beginning of time, workers have spent their lives weaving intricate carpets from the hair of women and girls. But why? Andreas Eschbach's mysterious, poignant space opera explores the absurdity of work and of life itself.

'A novel of ideas that evokes complex emotions through the working out of an intricate and ultimately satisfying plot, with echoes of Gene Wolfe, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Isaac Asimov' The New York Times Book Review

A mind-expanding space opera from one of Germany's most acclaimed science-fiction writers.

About the Author
Andreas Eschbach is one of Germany's pre-eminent science-fiction writers. Born in the city of Ulm in 1959, he studied aerospace engineering at the University of Stuttgart. The Hair Carpet Weavers (Die Haarteppichknupfer, 1995) was his debut novel, and won the Deutscher Science Fiction Preis, the Belgian Prix Bob Morane and the French Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire for best foreign-language novel. His subsequent books have won numerous prizes in Germany and been translated into a number of languages, including English, French, Italian, Russian, Serbian, Polish, Turkish and Japanese.

Reviews
A tale of empire, indoctrination, and extravagant revenge, that begins on a world where men dedicate their lives to weaving excruciatingly complicated carpets out of their wives' hair -- Rosanna Mclaughlin * The White Review, Books of the Year *
A novel of ideas that evokes complex emotions through the working out of an intricate and ultimately satisfying plot, with echoes of Gene Wolfe, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Isaac Asimov * The New York Times Book Review *
German SF has recently produced at least one new writer on the world stage: Andreas Eschbach * The New York Review of Science Fiction *
Eschbach is a novelist with vision, with compassion, and with a sense of tragedy, of character, of spectacle, and of human possibility, and also human inevitability ... An unforgettable, beautiful, perpetually entertaining novel -- Orson Scott Card
An outstanding work -- John Clute
A world-class SF voice * Locus *
The Carpet Makers will blow you away ... clever, insightful, entertaining and satisfying * Analog *
A magnum opus ... Even more astounding, it was Eschbach's debut * Kirkus *



Book Information
ISBN 9780241454718
Author Andreas Eschbach
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint Penguin Classics
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 187g
Dimensions(mm) 181mm * 111mm * 18mm