THE REVELATIONS
The Revelations is my first novel. It’s probably the best thing I’ll ever write. To this day I still get random emails from people who stumble across it (it was published at the height of Covid) saying it’s their favorite novel of all time. There is not another novel like it; of this alone I am sure.
What is the book about? It’s a murder mystery set in the world of scientific research into consciousness. It’s an exposé of academia. A hymn to New York City. A cautionary tale for would-be geniuses. A bildungsroman. A labyrinth where minotaurs make their chthonic nests in the subway tunnels. It’s on the beauty of minds and the beauty of bodies and their impossible relationship. It’s a message from an alien star. It’s an omnivorous thing I’m slightly scared of.
Here’s a small selection of what people have said about it:
“Proust, Bergson and before them St. Paul and St. Augustine have not gone in vain.” —SIR press
“Dense, literary, and hallucinogenic, The Revelations is an impassioned argument over beer and amphetamines.” —Peter Watts, author of Blindsight.
“I have been writing and reading daily for decades, and I have never read anything like Erik Hoel’s remarkable debut novel.” —Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog
“To discover the complexities of Hoel’s writing is to look straight into the dreadful eyes of agony, to breathe in the claustrophobia of a captivated being, to smell the blood oozing from the corners of its drilled skull, to witness rodents scavenge on once living flesh, without promise of deliverance.” —Berfrois Magazine
“The Revelations is hilarious and deeply serious, heady and carnal and intellectual, all at once.” —Catherine Chung, fiction editor of Guernica magazine