Recently The Modern Word sponsored a contest we named “The Discovery”:

As the entries started to come in, we were a bit surprised at some of their depth – more than a few people took this as an opportunity to spin Borgesian yarns, filling our in-box with tales of imaginary books, treacherous academics, and pages which acted as portals to other worlds. Indeed, Borges was quite prominent, and several people called upon him directly – Raphael Pallais was visited by Borges’ apparition, while Fabio Arciniegas actually discovered his memories. A few others took a different tack, choosing to fabricate entire lost works: Paul Kane provided a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of Harry Matthew’s An English Similitude, Dan Geddes outlined Faulkner’s Ulysses-like Sons of the South, and John Cooper measured himself against Dostoevsky, whose Flaws of the Flawless was discovered scrawled across “four hundred loose and unnumbered pages, a canvas jacket, a pair of boots and seven planks of rotted wood.” As usual, humor again played an important role – not only in some of our winning entries, but particularly in Shahar Even-Dar Mandel’s “No More Waiting,” in which the third act of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot reveals the titular character to be a pizza delivery man.

It was not easy selecting a final three, but in the end we decided to adhere as closely as possible to the question posed by the original contest itself, while making some allowances for inventive fiction. The First Prize winner will recieve a signed copy of Alan Moore’s Voice of the Fire. Other prizes include numerous books, which will be mentioned here just as soon as the winners select them.

All books courtesy from the respective publisher. We’d especially like to thank Top Shelf for donating the signed Alan Moore novel! And a special thanks to Tammy Duncan of Orange You Glad for her contest idea.