---
product_id: 54667821
title: "Filaria"
brand: "brent hayward"
price: "€ 21.06"
currency: EUR
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 3
category: "Books"
url: https://www.desertcart.it/products/54667821-filaria
store_origin: IT
region: Italy
---

# Filaria

**Brand:** brent hayward
**Price:** € 21.06
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** Filaria by brent hayward
- **How much does it cost?** € 21.06 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.it](https://www.desertcart.it/products/54667821-filaria)

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- brent hayward enthusiasts

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## Description

From Publishers Weekly
        	  
        	  
        		  
        		  
	        		
						
			        		Starred Review. Hayward&apos;s debut is a powerful, beautifully-written dystopian tale concerning four inhabitants of a gigantic but dying artificial habitat. Young Phister has lived his entire life on the radioactive lowest level, until he sets off in pursuit of a friend, and soon becomes lost among endless passageways. Ancient Mereziah, who&apos;s devoted his life to servicing the habitat&apos;s elevators, decides to hitch a ride on the outside of one of them, hoping to rise to the fabled top of the world before he dies. Tran so Phengh, a fisherman plying his trade on a polluted and retreating lake deep within the artificial world, leaves his dying wife and sets off on a quest to ask important questions of the Gods. Deidre, a pampered young girl who lives on the beautiful pastoral level at the top of the habitat, is wrenched away from her family by monstrous angels. Eventually, each learns some small part of the secret behind their claustrophobic artificial world and its impending collapse, though the tale ends abruptly, with no real resolution and little hope. With well-developed characters and four strong plotlines told through alternating chapters, Hayward delivers a fulfilling read.
						    	
					    	
						
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        	  	  Review
        	  
        	  
        		  
        		  
	        		
						
			        		Praise for Brent Hayward &#x201C;Where [Head Full of Mountains] stands out from its brethren is in the quality of Hayward&#x2019;s (Filaria) prose, and the skill with which he carefully details each scene and each character, using well-worn set pieces with an energy and splendor that blinds readers to their essential familiarity.&#x201D;&#x2015;Publishers Weekly &#x201C;[The Fecund&#x2019;s Melancholy Daughter is] beautifully written and morally ambivalent, this complex tale will appeal to readers of Gene Wolfe and China Mi&#xE9;ville.&#x201D;&#x2015;Publishers Weekly (starred review) &#x201C;Toronto&#x2019;s Brent Hayward has a knack for creating incredibly lush alternative worlds and mythologies, and Head Full of Mountains may be his most complex and demanding work yet. . . . [The protagonist&#x2019;s] journey suggests an allegory of human development progressing through different stages of life, but readers will probably come up with many other interpretations as well, perhaps seeing in it a nightmare of isolated and introverted consciousness, or the endgame of technologies that have left humanity behind. The result is one of the more different and difficult SF novels of the year, but also one of the most rewarding.&#x201D;&#x2015;Alex Good, The Toronto Star &#x201C;Hayward&#x2019;s debut [Filaria] is a powerful, beautifully written dystopian tale. . . .&#x201D;&#x2015;Publishers Weekly (starred review) &#x201C;. . . Filaria is simply one of the best books written in the last decade and is the best science fiction/fantasy book that I have read in a long time.&#x201D;&#x2015;Examiner.com &#x201C;A disquieting, claustrophobic, compelling hybrid of China Mi&#xE9;ville and J. G. Ballard. I first read Filaria almost two years ago: its subterranean imagery has been stuck in my midbrain ever since.&#x201D;&#x2015;Peter Watts, author of Starfish and Blindsight
						    	
					    	
						
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        	  	  About the Author
        	  
        	  
        		  
        		  
	        		
						
			        		Brent Hayward was born in London, England, and grew up in Montreal. His short fiction has appeared in various publications, including OnSpec, ChiZine, Horizons SF, Tesseract 14, and the first Chilling Tales anthology. In 2006, his story &quot;Phallex Comes Out&quot; (ChiZine) was nominated for a Story South award for best on-line fiction of that year. In 2008, his first novel, Filaria, was published by CZP. Among other great reviews, Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred write up, calling Filaria &apos;powerful&apos; and &apos;beautifully written&apos;. His second novel, The Fecund&apos;s Melancholy Daughter, also got a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was short-listed for the 2012 CBC Bookie Awards. Brent attended the Clarion SF workshop in 1995. For a few years he lived in Poland with his family but is now back in Canada. His third novel, Head Full of Mountains, was published in 2014 and nominated for a Sunburst award. A collection of short stories is forthcoming. He can be reached through his website, brenthayward.com. By day, he works in the aerospace field.
						    	
					    	
						
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## Images

![Filaria - Image 1](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41gAhGUFNdL.jpg)
![Filaria - Image 2](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41kChXnt-RL.jpg)
![Filaria - Image 3](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/31qdgmU3oRL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    A completely singular literary science fiction novel
  

*by Z***N on April 7, 2013*









  
  
    Filaria is, in its conciseness and its oddly disturbing grace, one of the finest debuts written in the last decade -- in the sff genre or any other genre. For a fast reader, it could be consumed in nearly a breath, but this would be to miss the point entirely. This is a book meant to be examined, to be known.What strikes me as so unique is how Hayward manages to build such a intensely resonant world in so few words. You will not forget having been in this book. Images, perhaps even whole scenes if you're visually minded, will stick with you for the remainder of your life.Here, because it might illustrate what I'm trying (and probably failing) to say, is something I said about Filaria in an interview:"There is a scene in it where two ancient elevator-repairmen brothers are hanging in a massive (and malfunctioning) elevator shaft--or rather, have been hanging in a massive elevator shaft their entire lives. This may seems a somewhat mundane scenario when compared to interstellar wars and such, but there is for me this moment of consideration: what must life be like, hanging in silence and darkness for most of your life, waiting on... what? An elevator car that will never come? It's frightening to consider, and yet in its way it is also beautiful in an immensely sad way. It's almost like considering death, that great unknown."Anyway, you should buy it, because it's great.
  


### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    characters with depth, intricate world
  

*by M***C on February 14, 2014*









  
  
    FILARIA will worm its way into every section of your brain like a tiny parasite that sneaks in and slowly awakens and fires up your neurons.The world is a mere shell of what it used to be, littered with remnants, populated by a ragtag bunch existing on multiple levels. Each subset of this fractured world is largely ignorant of the others, with minds full of myths and scuttlebutt.Brent Hayward shines a spotlight on four people, the narrative lens closing in on the minutiae of their lives as if the larger world where they existed was irrelevant to their respective tales. But there are hints that if you pull the lens far enough back, you will see that world and how they each fit in it, that their lives are interrelated and intertwined.Stylistically, I can't recall reading anything written in this manner before. It is superbly novel and fascinating. The structure simultaneously elucidates and mystifies, maintaining a high level of intrigue. Both the microcosmic and macrocosmic views reveal a world that is ultimately foreign-- a desolate, splintered world, de facto functioning separately and independently but simultaneously suffering for the lack of integration. The depth of the characters is matched by the intricacy of the worldbuilding.FILARIA is a masterful blend of simplicity and complexity. There is simplicity and a linear symbolism in the imagery of a man hanging on near the bottom, always looking up at heights he so wishes to reach. There is complexity in the imagery of the same man hanging on-- to existence for its own sake, to a sense of duty, to a hope that he knows is ultimately futile.Hayward prodigiously strings words together. Even when he describes a bleak landscape or a hopeless situation, it is nonetheless exquisite. There are so many tiny, wondrous details in the world he has built. I deliberately slowed down my reading lest I miss any of it. There are strange and fascinating creatures. There is effective symmetry in how mundane objects are deemed talismanic and ultimately crucial ones as decorative and useless.Hayward deliberately weaves every seemingly isolated thread into a beautiful tapestry, going back and forth between the four individuals, slowly revealing bits and pieces of the world by unveiling more details about their lives.This is a story of survival and a story of death. It is a tale of realized culpability and the possibility of redemption. There is love, lust, disdain, indifference. It is where myth encounters reality. It is the bridge between self-image, actuality and potentiality. This is a story about searching for something with no certainty it even exists.I hate this book. I absolutely detest it. Why? For this reason: I can no longer be content and blissful in my ignorance. I am now fully aware of the pitiful limits of my imagination and intelligence, for not in a million years could I have conceived of such a labyrinthine world, populated by such distinct individuals, written in a compulsively readable style and structure. Brent Hayward manages with a few words or lines to express what I would be unable to in ten pages. Heck, I'm bumbling through this review, feeling inadequate to the task of describing how challenging and rewarding reading this book is. I doubt I shall ever be equal to the task.
  


### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Ready for More...
  

*by T***R on January 6, 2012*









  
  
    I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.When I started out with this novel, I thought the description sounded to my liking, but after getting in about 30 pages through, I wasn't so sure. I am one for sci-fi and fantasy, but the world seemed so absurd...almost to the point of ridiculousness. But after I got to about page 50, I realized I was no longer wondering, "Should I continue reading this?" because I was actually getting into it...and liking it!The first thing I noticed was how high the diction was. A lot of the words are archaic, adding to the tone of the book. Some of the words are just weird. And some of the words are made up. Everything you could ask for in a sci-fi novel! The grammar was impeccable, and I absolutely love this writer's style. Even though I'm not typically interested in description pertaining to environment or place, it's almost impossible to understand sci-fi without understanding the world the characters are living in (or in this case, worlds?) A lot of the metaphors also caught me off guard, but in a good way. Most were so original that I literally had to sit there in a silence for a few moments to completely absorb what I had just read.Humor was integrated well into the stories, as well as sadness, and a feeling of nostalgia (at least, for me). My favorite character was "Tran so." Saying that, however, one of the only complaints I had with this novel was the added sexuality. I typically embrace sexuality when sexuality is due, but in this novel it just felt out of place and awkward, especially when I started looking up to Tran so as a sort of father-like figure.The only other complaint I would say I had with this book was that I didn't really like that we had to keep up with four different characters. It would be different if the chapters were shorter, or if the characters had more to do with each other, but it was definitely hard to keep track of what had just elapsed when changing from one character's POV to another.
  


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*Store origin: IT*
*Last updated: 2026-02-22*