Queed: A Novel

Queed is a brilliant young man trapped in his own mind. Frightfully intellectual and catastrophically socially inept, he stumbles through early 20th-century New York like a man who has read everything except the book of human connection. When an awkward encounter with a young girl and her enormous dog launches his reluctant journey toward actual living, Queed must confront an enemy far more terrifying than any philosophical problem: other people. Henry Sydnor Harrison's 1911 novel is a quietly radical character study, neither mocking nor sentimentalizing its odd, fragile protagonist. It's for anyone who has ever felt like they were observing life from behind glass, wondering if the world might let them in if they could only stop being themselves.