In this spellbinding new book, the man described by the Daily Telegraph as 'possibly the best living writer in Britain' takes on his biggest challenge yet: unlocking the film that has obsessed him all his adult life. Magnificently unpredictable and hilarious (and, surely, one of the most unusual books ever written about cinema), Zona takes the reader on an enthralling and thought-provoking journey. Like the film Stalker itself, it confronts the most mysterious and enduring questions of life and how to live.

About the Author

Geoff Dyer is the author of Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi and three previous novels, as well as nine non-fiction books. Dyer has won the Somerset Maugham Prize, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction, a Lannan Literary Award, the International Center of Photography's 2006 Infinity Award for writing on photography and the American Academy of Arts and Letters' E.M. Forster Award. In 2009 he was named GQ's Writer of the Year. He won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2012 and was a finalist in 1998. He lives in London.

Reviews

Reading Dyer is akin to the sudden elation and optimism you feel when you make a new friend, someone as silly as you but cleverer too, in whose company you know you will travel through life more vagrantly, intensely, joyfully. - Daily Telegraph

Some films inspire devotion in viewers, while others spark obsession. Novelist and nonfiction author Dyer (Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi) has become obsessed with the 1979 Russian film Stalker, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. Dyer gives the reader an impressionistic, deeply subjective tour of a cerebral film featuring a character who guides people through a forbidden wasteland zone. The author claims the work contains the "quality of prophecy" and has always "invited allegorical readings." As he explicates the film, Dyer supplies lengthy, deliberate digressions on such topics as drinking in films, the annoying quality of coming attractions movie trailers, and his perceived similarities between Stalker and The Wizard of Oz-the latter film he admits he's never seen and never intends to see. The book is a bit of a bumpy ride, not for all tastes. Verdict Some readers might enjoy getting inside Dyer's head, and his book is distinguished by his stylish if disjointed prose. However, because relatively few have seen the Tarkovsky film, this remains an optional purchase.-Stephen Rees, formerly with Levittown Lib., PA (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.