The Shadow of the Torturer, the first novel in the four-book cycle that makes up the Book of the New Sun, came out in 1980. I tried to read it not long afterwards – and got stuck. This was a time when I could read almost anything but The Shadow of the Torturer defeated me.

However, it left a shadow mark: the faint wish to return to it some day. Now, 45 years later, I have returned to it and I discovered that it left more of a mark upon me than I had realised. For the hero of the novel, the apprentice in the guild of torturers on an ancient earth orbiting a dying sun, is named Severian – and the middle name of my youngest son is Severian. I had no conscious recollection whatsoever that this was the case, yet my youngest son is named Isaac Severian Albert. Clearly, the book had had a greater impact on me than I realised.

Reading it now, I begin to see why. But that understanding is still only partial; this is a rich, dense, thickly layered book, one that will take many readings to truly appreciate (and I might need to look up some other people’s critiques to pick up on all the allusions). It’s writing that bears the weight of the ancient earth it depicts. Time itself has become thick and dense, while everything else grows more insubstantial, drifting into versions of itself layered into the past.

While I can’t say I understood it, I loved it.