Knowing

Published all through my teenage, I have always felt great fondness for Gene Wolfe's The Shadow of the Torturer, The Claw of the Conciliator, The Sword of the Lictor, and The Citadel of the Autarch. A fifth book appeared, The Urth of the New Sun, which is almost an epilogue, and was also interesting.  He also published an explanatory volume, The Castle of the Otter, which I saw one morning spending some time on the grounds of the library at Huntington Beach, California, America.  I remember five short stories and a play in the work.