A Short Stay in Hell

Not yet. Film rights were optioned by the American independent filmmaker David Spaltro, who has called the novella "one of the most original and powerfully moving things I've ever read", but as of 2026 no adaptation has been released and no production has been announced. There is an unabridged audiobook edition.

The novella draws heavily on and reinterprets concepts from Mormon theology, particularly the idea of eternal progression and the nature of the afterlife. Readers familiar with Latter-day Saint beliefs will recognize many of the underlying philosophical questions explored.

A Short Stay in Hell is a complete, self-contained novella. While it explores profound philosophical themes, it does not require reading any other works by the author to understand its narrative or concepts.

It is built directly on it. Jorge Luis Borges's 1941 story imagines a near-infinite library containing every possible book; Peck takes that structure and makes it a hell someone has to live in. The parameters differ — Peck's library shelves every possible 410-page book, and his version is bisected by an enormous chasm — and where Borges wrote a few pages of speculation, Peck follows one man through eons inside it. Readers who know the Borges will recognise the architecture immediately, but the novella assumes no familiarity with it.