Vinlandia

Thomas Pynchon — along with Salinger, the "great American recluse," one of the greatest writers of world literature of the 20th, and now 21st century, unanimously recognized as a classic on par with Nabokov, Joyce, and Borges right after his first publications. Pynchon's heroes are traditionally obsessed with themes of universal conspiracy and social paranoia, the search for the secret springs of history. "Vinlandia" was released with a huge, nearly 20-year gap after Pynchon's previous novel, the epic "Gravity's Rainbow" (after almost another 20 years, the second book of the "California duology" — "Inherent Vice"). Its unexpected clarity and directness surprised many — but the expectations were more than met. Here the "children of the flowers," having lived from the free-loving 1960s to the grim 1980s, continue to resist the state machinery of repression, the wooded California mountains hide a spiritual refuge for female ninjas, and Zoid Collins, a former keyboardist of the surf band "The Corvairs," and his daughter Prairie are obsessed with the search for the legendary Frenzy Wrath; Zoid's wife, Prairie's mother — she disappeared many years ago, clearly not without the involvement of Birk Vond, a federal agent with special powers…
In the fall of 2025, Paul Thomas Anderson — one of the main visionaries of contemporary cinema, director of "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia," "There Will Be Blood" and "The Master," who has already adapted Pynchon's novel "Inherent Vice" for the big screen — releases the film "Battle After Battle" (starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio Del Toro, Sean Penn), a loose adaptation of "Vinlandia."