**"This work may well stand as one of the very best works of the century." —Atlantic Review

"[A] brilliant and turbulent first novel." —George Plimpton, New York Times Book Review**

The wild, macabre tale of the twentieth centuray and of two men - one looking for something he has lost, the other with nothing much to lose - and "V.," the unknown woman of the title.

Pynchon's debut novel follows discharged Navy sailor Benny Profane as he reconnects with an eclectic collection of artists in New York known as the "Whole Sick Crew" along with his sidekick Pig Bodine, and the plot of Herbert Stencil, looking to find the woman he knows only as she is described in his father's diary: "V."

Brimming with madcap characters, the novel meanders from New York to Alexandria, Cairo, Paris, Florence, and Africa, and traverses generations. Time Magazine raves, "Few books haunt the waking or the sleeping mind, but this is one."