Description

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From the award-winning and bestselling author of Feed comes a raucous and slyly funny adult fiction debut, about the quest to steal the mystical bones of a long-dead saint

The year is 1087, and a pox is sweeping through the Italian port city of Bari. When a lowly monk is visited by Saint Nicholas in his dreams, he interprets the vision as a call to action. But his superiors, and the power brokers they serve, have different plans for the tender-hearted Brother Nicephorus.

Enter Tyun, a charismatic treasure hunter renowned for “liberating” holy relics from their tombs. The seven-hundred-year-old bones of Saint Nicholas rest in distant Myra, Tyun explains, and they’re rumored to weep a mysterious liquid that can heal the sick. For the humble price of a small fortune, Tyun will steal the bones and deliver them to Bari, curing the plague and restoring glory to the fallen city. And Nicephorus, the “dreamer,” will be his guide.

What follows is a heist for the ages, as Nicephorus is swept away on strange tides—and alongside even stranger bedfellows—to commit an act of sacrilege. Based on real historical accounts, Nicked is a wildly imaginative, genre-defying, and delightfully queer adventure, full of romance, intrigue, and wide-eyed wonder at the world that awaits beyond our own borders.

About the Author

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M. T. ANDERSON is the New York Times bestselling author of Feed, a National Book Award Finalist and winner of the LA Times Book Prize; The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, winner of the 2006 National Book Award; and Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad, a Boston Globe/Horn Book Honor Book, among many other books for children and young adults. He is also the author of three graphic novels, including The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge, a National Book Award Finalist, with Eugene Yelchin.

Praise For…

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"M. T. Anderson is one of our greatest and most precious voices. His books aren't just brilliantly witty and vastly entertaining, they're fixed stars of wisdom and sanity in our increasingly unhinged universe. When lost, I use them to steer by."
—Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians Trilogy

"Anderson is a once-in-a-generation perfect storm of wit, ethical zing, and sheer linguistic power."
—George Saunders, author of Liberation Day and Lincoln in the Bardo

“Witty and deeply affecting, a pointed send-up of power, theology, ownership, and the divine, all executed with masterful flair.”
—Gretchen Felker-Martin, author of Manhunt and Cuckoo

“A miracle worker, M. T. Anderson has exhumed the bones of holy legend and startled them to life. Nicked is a far-fetched caper based on the actual heist of the corpse of Saint Nicholas. At once blessedly comic and acerbic, Anderson’s confession of devotion to the unresolvable mysteries of faith and love had me laughing out loud and tearing up—nearly simultaneously.”
—Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked and Elphie