The Ink Reader
Every copied page remembers the hand that made it. Some hands have never stopped working.
In development
The story
What waits inside
In a quiet archive among the caves at Dunhuang, Maire is training under Tursunjan, the last ink-reader. Their craft is exacting: open one scroll, map the ink, read aloud, wait. If the held hand releases its brush, the scroll can be dried, re-bound, and returned to the shelves.
Four hundred eighty-nine writers have let go. One has not.
The final scroll defeated Tursunjan. The reader who tried before Maire died while reading it. That reader was her mother, Dilara. Her brush still waits in the cave, braced against a line that refuses to end.
To approach it, Maire must keep grief from becoming spectacle and love from becoming force. She must listen for the difference between a hand that needs more time and one that is asking for another kind of reading.
A page can hold a person. What will it take to let her go?
This language edition is still taking shape.
You can explore the story now. Where another language edition is already published, its purchase options appear below.
Read before you choose
The pages remain closed for now.
A preview will appear only when a finished passage can represent the book without spoiling it.
Book details
- Series
- The Provenance Novels
- Availability
- In development
- Language
- English
- Publisher
- LPH98.lifestyle
- Author
- L.P.H. Nordhaven
- Reading order
- A complete standalone novel
Continue through this series
Another complete story, a related promise.
The Provenance Novels
Messages for Later
Vera Halvorsen never returned a call; she answered everyone anyway.
Available now
The Provenance Novels
Say Again
Fen translates other people's voices for a living. Her own family left her a language she cannot understand.
Available now
The Provenance Novels
Shallow End
The municipal pool closes in twelve weeks. Its seven-a.m. regulars refuse to go quietly.
Available now