The Hair-Carpet Weavers - Andreas Eschbach

The Hair-Carpet Weavers by Andreas Eschbach / ISBN 9780241454718 / 314-page paperback from Penguin Classics 

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"A novel of ideas that evokes complex emotions through the working out of an intricate and ultimately satisfying plot, with echoes of Gene Wolfe, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Isaac Asimov"-- New York Times Book Review

In a distant universe, since the beginning of time, workers have spent their lives weaving intricate carpets from the hair of women and girls. But why? Andreas Eschbach's mysterious, poignant space opera explores the absurdity of work and of life itself.

Andreas Eschbach is one of Germany's preeminent science fiction writers. Born in the city of Ulm in 1959, he studied aerospace engineering at the University of Stuttgart. The Hair Carpet Weavers (Die Haarteppichknüpfer, 1995) was his debut novel, and won the Deutscher Science Fiction Preis, the Belgian Prix Bob Morane and the French Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire for best foreign-language novel. His subsequent books have won numerous prizes in Germany and been translated into a number of languages, including English, French, Italian, Russian, Serbian, Polish, Turkish and Japanese.