S. is a 2013 novel written by Doug Dorst and conceived by J.J. Abrams. The novel is unusual in its format, presented as a story within a story. It is composed of the novel Ship of Theseus by a fictional author, and hand-written notes filling the book's margins as a dialogue between two college students hoping to uncover the author's mysterious identity and the novel's secret plus loose supplementary materials tucked in between pages. S. has been called "part work of art, literary experiment, and love letter to the physical expression of books." S. is presented in the form of a novel called Ship of Theseus written by an elusive author named V.M. Straka and published in 1949. Beyond the black slipcover with the S. title, no reference is made to Dorst or Abrams, and the only reference to the book's true publishing information appears in fine print inside the back cover. The publication information is printed under a mock-up of a high school library's check-out history of the book, spannin...