Fool on the Hill

Myth and reality collide on an Ithaca campus “in a comic fantasy of wonderful energy, invention, and generosity of spirit” (Alison Lurie).
 
Stephen Titus George is a young writer-in-residence at Cornell University in upstate New York. An imaginative bestselling author in search of a new story, he’s seeing his life as a modern-day fairy tale, and himself as a would-be knight looking to woo a lovely maiden—or the bewitching Calliope and his guiding light, Aurora Borealis Smith. However, his happy ending might not be up to him.
 
There’s another writer who has a greater influence on campus. Unseen, yet twice as formidable, Mr. Sunshine is an eternal semi-retired deity who’s been fashioning his own narrative for centuries. He has all his characters in place—dragons, sprites, gnomes, and villains. And now, finally, his hero. As Mr. Sunshine’s world comes to fabulous and violent life, can Stephen decide his own fate if it’s already being plotted by a god?
 
An epic of life and death, good and evil, love and sorcery, Fool on the Hill lands Matt Ruff happily on the shelf between Tom Robbins and J. R. R. Tolkien for every lover of the “funky and fantastical” (New York magazine).
 
“Inspired . . . rich in flavorful language . . . [a] dazzling tour de force.” —San Francisco Chronicle
 
“The plot comes together like a brilliant clockwork toy.” —Locus