The Divine Farce

Sage is a thin man shut in a small cell deep underground, in an institution that works as a kind of hell. Two other prisoners share the space with him, Rose and Henry Greene, and over time the three become close.

Sage then digs a way out through the concrete wall. The three slip into an enormous cave crowded with other prisoners, and in the press of bodies they lose track of one another.

Alone, Sage is pulled into the mob around the feeding trough, where people fight over hard biscuits. He finds, to his own unease, that he belongs there. Above him, light holes pierce the ceiling, and he wonders what lies behind them: eternal freedom or eternal isolation.

Sage narrates this short allegorical novel in the first person, and its tone is grim. Michael S. A. Graziano, a neuroscientist at Princeton, wrote it. Whether Sage can ever reach the light, and what he would find there, is the question the book turns on.