Max Frei Returns with The Stranger's Magic

This week Russian literary sensation Max Frei returns to the United States with the third installment in the internationally bestselling Labyrinths of Echo fantasy series, The Stranger's Magic. 

First published in Russia more than fifteen years ago, Frei's Labyrinths of Echo series has since become a bestselling international phenomena, infusing highly philosophical comic fantasy with extraordinary wit. Plunging back into the enchanted parallel world of Echo originally portrayed in The Stranger and The Stranger's Woes, twenty-something eponymous anti-hero and self-described loser "Sir Max" returns in The Stranger's Magic, the smash hit series that has sold more than two million copies across the globe.


An unlikely protagonist, Max Frei is a social outcast,a  gluttonous loafer, and a hardened smoker who sleeps away his days until he finds himself transplanted to a magical world where he possesses powerful supernatural abilities. As a "Nocturnal Representative of the Most Venerable Head of the Minor Secret Investigative Force of the City of Echo," Sir Max investigates cases more complicated, extravagant, and dangerous than ever in The Stranger's Magicas he battles illegal magic and combats trespassing monsters from alternate realities. Joined by a returning cast of crime fighting companions including the omniscient Sir Juffin Hully, the uproarious Sir Manga Melifaro, and the beautiful Lady Melamori Blimm, Sir Max and his friends tackle extraordinary capers including palace coups, attempted murders, and bungled burglaries.


Appropriate for first time visitors to Echo and diehard fans alike, The Stranger's Magic blends a complex web of clues with a cast of unforgettable characters, offering an unequaled fantasy epic for a new century.

Advance Praise for THE STRANGER’S MAGIC:

“Unpredictable, mysterious, and full of surprises … readers will be entranced by the complex world.” – Publishers Weekly

“There are moments that might have come from the pages of Douglas Adams, others that wouldn’t be out of place in Alice in Wonderland … literate, silly fun.” – Kirkus Reviews

“Quirky humor, hair-raising adventures.” – Booklist (Starred Review)

Praise for Max Frei and THE LABYRINTHS OF ECHO series:

“Fans of Jasper Fforde and Susanna Clarke will happily jump into Frei’s world.” – USA Today

“Impossible to put down … wildly imaginative and entertaining.” – Fantasy Book Critic

“[Frei] is smart, savvy, and funny; an everyman hero we can all believe in.”

– Bookslut

THE STRANGER'S WOES: The Continuing Adventures of Max Frei

THE STRANGER IS BACK!

Max Frei, author of the international bestselling The Labyrinths of Echo series, continues the adventures of twenty-something loser Max Frei with The Stranger's Woes, published this week by Overlook.

In this new volume, Max finds himself transported to the magical world of Echo, where he possesses magical abilities and becomes the Nocturnal Representative of the Most Venerable Head of the Minor Secret Investigative Force of the City of Echo. With friends and colleagues—the omniscient Sir Juffin Hully, the hilarious Melifaro and the beautiful Lady Melamori Blimm—Sir Max enjoys a life where he’s no longer a social outcast as he solves crimes, battles illegal magic and fights trespassing monsters from other worlds. Now in The Stranger’s Woes, Max will takes on cases more complicated and dangerous than ever before in this strange universe.

Packed with the same wise-cracking humor and running jokes, The Stranger's Woes will delight fans of The Stranger, which is now available in a new paperback edition.

As many know by now, Max Frei is the pen name for the Russian writer and artist Svetlana Yuryevna Martynchik (right). Martynchik has written ten fantasy novels in the Labyrinths of Echo series as well as several other works. Max Frei, as we all know, appears as a character in the series.

New in Paperback: Max Frei's THE STRANGER

Max Frei’s novels have been a literary sensation in Russia since their debut in 1996, and when The Overlook Press published The Stranger last year, American readers were equally thrilled.

Fantasy, horror, philosophy, and dark comedy are all ingredients in this amazing work in which a sharp wit and a bewildering web of clues opens up a Pandora's box of secrets. Max Frei is a twenty-something loser—a big sleeper (during the day, that is—at night he can’t catch a wink), a hardened smoker, and an uncomplicated glutton and loafer. But then he gets lucky. He contacts a parallel world in his dreams, where magic is a daily practice. Once a social outcast, he’s now known in his new world as the “unequalled Sir Max.” He’s a member of the Department of Absolute Order, formed by a species of enchanted secret agents; his job is to solve cases more extravagant and unreal than one could imagine—a journey that will take Max down the winding paths of this strange and unhinged universe.

With The Stranger now available in paperback, Overlook is set to release the second volume in Max Frei's "The Labyrinth of Echo" series, The Stranger's Woes, on June 9.

Max Frei's THE STRANGER Named Fandomania's Top Book for 2009

This just in from Kelly Melcher at Fandomania: Max Frei's The Stranger has been chosen as the Best Book of 2009! And here's why:

"The Stranger has to be one of the most imaginative and quirky stories released in a long time. It doesn’t use the supernatural as a crutch, but rather as a spice for the story. Readers will jump right into a story with a character, Max, who has one foot in our reality but the rest of his body firmly planted in a world straight out of one of his dreams. The Stranger combines oddball characters with a sense of danger, a splash of detective work, and a smidge of the fantastic into an imaginative and enveloping escape from reality. The story is told in episodic chapters, each one building upon the last, but not directly linked to the one before it. Imagine reading several Sherlock Holmes stories back to back, only in this case the stories feature strange devices, supernatural mysteries, and a cast of characters all of whom EXCEPT for our detective seem to know what is going on! Max and the other characters grow with each past experience, but readers could almost turn to any chapter and quickly figure out what is going on. Everything else aside, this is by far one of the most entertaining books to come around in a long time. It would be surprising if you could read this with a straight face the whole time, and yet the jovial nature doesn’t give way to lackluster writing. The Stranger is consistent throughout and stands head and shoulders above most books that have even come out in the last decade."

Max Frei's THE STRANGER in the California Literary Review

Ed Voves of the California Literary Review takes a look at The Stranger by Max Frei: "Imagine that you are meeting a person for the first time in a distant land. Deferring to local custom, you hold a hand over your eyes and say in greeting, “I see you as though in a waking dream.” If this arcane ritual strikes a familiar note with you, then there are two possibilities. You are either a resident of the mysterious realm of Echo or you have read Max Frei’s fantasy novel, The Stranger. The second scenario is the more likely. The Stranger is a translation of the first of a wildly popular series of novels from Russia. By turns serious and screwball, it combines sly, sometimes campy, humor with a yearning for personal insight and a good day’s sleep. The Stranger is an episodic quest set in a parallel universe, in which a Sherlock Holmes-Dr. Watson duo combat malign magicians and search for the perfect restaurant. . . . The Stranger is a hugely enjoyable mix of madcap mirth and fantastical adventure. Hold a hand over your eyes and say magic words and perhaps you too will glimpse the wondrous realm of Echo “as though in a waking dream.”

Max Frei's THE STRANGER Reviewed in Bookslut

Our friend Colleen Mondor at Bookslut has posted a fantastic review of Max Frei's The Stranger: Max Frei’s The Stranger is an international bestseller that took Russia by storm. Mad curiosity over what literary sensation the Russians love was enough to make me want to read this book. Apparently the Russians like fantasy -- really well written fantasy -- and The Stranger is a great blend of that genre and hardboiled mystery with some thrills and It’s a Mad Mad Mad World fish out of water comedy thrown in. It’s an utterly original title that any fan of the surreal (adult or teen) will enjoy.

Max Frei, the same as the author, is a “twenty-something loser” who is drifting through life with nothing exceptional to share other than odd sleeping patters. At night he is a chronic insomniac while during the day sleep comes with ease. He remembers his dreams with deep clarity and many times finds himself in a world with an old world European sensibility where he enjoys wonderful meals at a certain sidewalk café and chats with a man named Sir Juffin. As the book opens Max discovers that he can travel to this parallel world, and live in the “City of Echo.” Sir Juffin makes him a member of the Department of Absolute Order, a group of secret agents tasked with solving magical crimes. It is here that Max’s nocturnal habits are much needed and he finds himself battling all manner of demonic creatures and wizards gone bad along with the rest of the department. Max makes friends, proves capable of great bravery and even become Death after a mix-up with some major magic. While all of the mysteries are serious (even the one with magically animated evil dolls ala Chucky), Frei’s humor comes through with every word. Readers will find themselves enjoying Max’s adventures without ever fearing for him or the denizens of Echo. There are fatalities but also romance (secret agent style) and the surprising domestication of cats and swimming in multiple bathtubs. Frei excels at his world building and brings Echo alive in the best combination of 19th century Austria and futuristic steampunk delights. Frei has a series of books set in Echo and hopefully there will be more of Max’s adventures to come for English readers. This is irresistible reading. He’s smart, savvy and funny; an everyman hero we can all believe in."

Max Frei's THE STRANGER Reviewed in USA Today

Book critic Carol Memmott takes a look at Max Frei's The Stranger in a round-up of "International Voices" in USA Today: "Max Frei is the "Nocturnal Representative of The Most Venerable Head of the Minor Secret Investigative Force" in the city of Echo, the dreamlike fantasy world in this epic written by Russians Svetlana Martynchik and Igor Stepin under a pseudonym that also happens to be the name of the novel's protagonist. Fans of Jasper Fforde and Susanna Clarke will happily jump into Frei's world, where the one-time slacker — now magical secret agent — solves bizarre cases in an enchanted alternate world. Published in 1996 in Russia and a best seller there, it's the first in the Labyrinths of Echo series."

More Raves for Max Frei's THE STRANGER

Another rave review for Max Frei's The Stranger:

"Before I say anything else I have to tell you that I’ve never looked forward to the publication of a book more than I did Max Frei’s The Stranger (Overlook). It’s been such a long time coming. I’ve been hearing about it for years but, in retrospect, it felt like whispers of things. Rumors from other lands. Something well imagined that could not possibly be true. Because both The Stranger and its almost iconic author, Max Frei, have taken on mythic proportions. All right, I’ll cop: in some circles, not so mythic. But in those circles, The Stranger -- and the books that come after -- had become almost the Holy Grail of books. If only, we said, Frei’s work could be translated into English, nothing would ever be the same as it had been.And then, of course, it was. And nothing ever will be the same, but not in the way we anticipated. See: it’s simply not possible to come to a book with the expectations I owned and not be disappointed on some level. And, in certain ways, I was. I am. But I do understand that you simply can’t run out and translate a Russian novel and expect it to play perfectly in English. And I’m talking any novel here. But with something as chewy and nuanced as The Stranger, you can amp all of that up considerably. This isn’t just a book, it’s an event. Clearly, that’s a little tough to live up to. The Stranger is epic fantasy on a quirky philosophical level. But if those words bring Terry Pratchett to mind, just clear your head: Frei’s work is nothing like that. In The Stranger, even the author is a fictional character. It has come to light that the actual author of Max Frei’s books is a woman named Svetlana Martynchik. Max Frei, the quasi author, is also at the center of his tales, which begin in The Stranger with Book One of the Labyrinths of Echo. It took my tightly honed North American sensibilities quite a while to pick up the rhythm of Freis’ writing: the alternate universe of dreams, the fact that he is a sort of magical secret agent who must stop a murderer from our world from getting his way in the new one. North American readers will find themselves slogging through at first: this is not your grandmother’s fantasy. But stick with it: all becomes clear after a while, as well as the density of wit we’re unused to reading English language authors. The Stranger is a fantastic book and the first of many to be published in English. If I don’t miss my guess, reading it now will put you in the vanguard." -Lincoln Cho, January Magazine

Overlook Publisher Peter Mayer Talks to GalleyCat

Peter Mayer spoke to Jason Boog of GalleyCat this week in Overlook's SoHo office. Here's the post: "GalleyCat caught up with Overlook Press founder Peter Mayer to study the fine art of literary obfuscation. This month, Overlook Press will publish The Stranger by Max Frei--a literary fantasy novel supposedly written by the novel's main character. In reality, The Stranger was written by a reclusive female artist and has sold millions of copies in Russia. After hearing Russian readers rave about the book, Mayer scooped up the eight-book series. "A great deal of Russian literature has been disguised," he explained. "Russia was an autocratic state with great curtailments on people's personal lives... [obfuscation] is a feature that kept a lot of writers out of jail for many years."

Mayer saw some recession-era parallels in the book: "Max arises from his despair in life and creates his own reality. People are looking for escapism during a recession... But the recession was the last thing I was thinking about when I bought it." Mayer said Overlook picked up fantasy books "by accident," but carved out a niche in the market. "There's a dumb world of fantasy and an intelligent world of fantasy. I'd like to think we inhabit the later."

The publisher also told readers to look out for A Quiet Belief In Angels, R.J. Ellory's thriller by set in Georgia, USA. Overlook will publish between 50,000 to 100,000 copies of the British thriller this fall. "This guy can really write. He wrote 22 novels before he published," Mayer said. "He said, 'Those books were my university. That's how I learned how to write.'"

Max Frei Introduces THE STRANGER: Altered Egos and Alternate Realities

Book blogger Rick Kleffel takes on The Stranger by Max Frei in this inspired new post:

"Literary tricksters get up to all sorts of shenanigans. Take for example, "Max Frei," the "author" of The Stranger. It might take readers a few heartbeats to figure out what exactly is going on, even though the title of the first chapter "Debut in Echo" is a pretty good clue, because "Max Frei" is both the author and the narrator of this novel. A memoir, you ask? Well, sure — a memoir in which the author journeys to an alternate reality when he sleeps. And that's probably the least strange aspect of this novel. Max Frei, the narrator / author of The Stranger tells us from the get-go that he just doesn't sleep very well, except during the day. And there's an exception there, as well, because when he falls to sleep he awakens in a dream world that's vivid enough to support what is now a ten-novel series, written originally in Russian.

The Stranger offers up a series of adventures but not necessarily a single plot arc beyond the continual and quite entertaining evolution of "Max Frei." That said, the spiky, smart prose and the often exceedingly cool surrealism that shoot through this book will certainly satisfy those looking for something rather different. The Russian flavor of the proceedings gives even the most ordinary stuff a weird sort of exoticism. Now all this sidesteps a rather major issue to my mind, that is, that the book is actually the work not of "Max Frei," the main character, but instead Svetlana Martynchik, who has been publishing book reviews as well as books under the pen name of Max Frei. So, big surprise, there is no city of Echo, and the only magicians are the ones who made half the wealth of this world disappear like, overnight.

While the world dances on the graves of Publishing Establishment, the establishment itself seems to be doing rather better than one might presume. Overlook Press is a great example. Peter Mayer and his crew of iconoclastic editors have a charmingly eclectic sense of taste, they work totally independently, and they're a general interest press, publishing non-fiction, literary fiction and outside stuff like this in hardcover original editions. Perhaps it's Overlook that resides in a dream world; and it's not a bit surprising that they've found Max Frei."

Early Raves for Max Frei's THE STRANGER

The buzz is building for Max Frei's international bestseller The Stranger, which will be published in April 2009. Kirkus Reviews offers some early praise: "If Harry Potter smoked cigarettes and took a certain matter-of-fact pleasure in administering tough justice, he might like Max Frei, the protagonist of this fantasy novel. Author Frei is a Russian whose books have been bestsellers in his homeland for the last dozen years. Frei, this novel's protagonist, is something of a dissolute slacker who once spent his nights smoking, eating and loafing, his days sleeping. When Sir Juffin Hully (who looks like Rutger Hauer's older brother, though, Frei suggests, "try to augment his striking image with a pair of light, slightly slanting eyes") comes into Frei's life, he acquires a new sense of purpose. Frei has always been a dreamer, and now he has reason to wander between Worlds and see what kind of mischief he can find. Hully is a masterpiece of Potterian eccentricity, and then some, and the tone of the book often has a Potterian charm, though there's an undercurrent of post–Cold War espionage in the mix; indeed, Frei, a onetime resident of the backwaters of empire transposed to the Heart of the World, reminds us that the barren borderlands house "the most diverse, sometimes extraordinarily powerful people, and not just wild barbarians," which seems a very Russian thing to inject into the proceedings. Inspired by such characters as the Master Who Snuffs Out Unnecessary Lives, a survivor of the Troubled Times, a habitu of places like the Murky Market and the House by the Bridge, and familiar with the deleterious effects the Elixir of Kaxar has on his countrymen, Frei does his bit to keep the world safe from malevolent magicians and conspiratorial spirits. And if the book is more talk than action, that talk is reliably entertaining, frequently double-edged and nicely idiosyncratic ("I'm off to do something meaningless, as you suggest. That's what I do best"). Well-written, well-paced grown-up fantasy with a strong dose of reality.