Centimi has always been told that he is human.
In the world he inhabits, that may be the strangest thing about him.
Civilization has collapsed and rebuilt itself more than once, leaving behind intelligent animals, chimeras, machines, artificial beings, and the scattered relics of humanity’s attempts to perfect itself. Centimi has spent much of his life with Doctor Monkey, an ape who has remade himself in humanity’s image—and who believes recovering what was lost may entitle him to rule what remains.
Their journey through the ruins of earlier ages repeatedly points toward the same mysterious figure: the Wolf Whale, an ancient being said to appear at crucial moments in history and answer the question that increasingly consumes Centimi and everyone around him: What makes someone human?
But answers have consequences. Competing claims to humanity soon become claims to power, and Centimi finds himself at the center of a struggle over who—or what—will inherit the world.
Surreal, philosophical, darkly comic, and deeply humane, The Legend of the Wolf Whale is a fable about identity, power, love, and the stories intelligent creatures tell themselves in order to know who they are.
Eric Kaplan is an Emmy Award–winning writer, producer, and author whose television credits include The Big Bang Theory, Futurama, The Simpsons, Late Show with David Letterman, and Flight of the Conchords. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, where his dissertation explored humor in the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard. He is the author of Does Santa Exist?: A Philosophical Investigation, an acclaimed exploration of metaphysics, belief, and comedy. The Legend of the Wolf Whale is his first novel.
THE LEGEND OF THE WOLF WHALE
a novel by Eric Kaplan
available May 4, 2027
Published by Rare Bird Books
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
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