The conversions
By: Harry Mathews.
Edition: 1st Dalkey Archive ed.
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Normal, IL
Language: eng
Number of pages: 182
Subjects: Eccentrics and eccentricities -- Fiction; Secret societies -- Fiction; Riddles -- Fiction
Description: At a dinner party hosted by a wealthy New Yorker, a guest receives a gold adze, the coveted prize in a worm race. When the man dies the next day, he bequeaths, according to a stipulation in his will, the bulk of his fortune to the adze's possessor, provided he answer three mysterious questions relating to the artifact's history.

In his search the owner encounters a menagerie of eccentric personalities: an ancient revolutionary in a Parisian prison, a ludicrous pair of gibberish-speaking brothers, and customs officials who spend their time reading contraband materials. He soon finds himself immersed in the centuries-long history of a persecuted religious sect and in an odyssey that begins in a forgotten fog-covered town in Scotland and ends on the ocean floor off the coast of an uncharted French island.