A Short Stay in Hell Summary: Peck’s Infinite Library
What Happens After Death in A Short Stay in Hell?
A devout Mormon father dies of brain cancer at forty-five, expecting the afterlife his faith promised him.
Instead, he wakes in an administrative office where a goat-legged demon explains that Zoroastrianism was the one true religion all along.
That is the premise of A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck, a short philosophical novella about a purgatorial Hell modeled on Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Library of Babel.”
Soren Johansson is given a youthful body and a single task: find the one book containing his complete earthly biography.
TL;DR: The Infinite Library Briefing
- The setup: A Mormon geologist dies, learns Zoroastrianism was the true faith, and is sent to a Hell built from Borges’s infinite library.
- The task: Find the single volume holding his error-free life story. Doing so grants entry to Heaven.
- The scale: The library holds 951,312,000 books, making the search effectively impossible.
- The anchor: A thousand-year love affair with Rachel Hasnick sustains Soren before violence tears it apart.
- The arc: Across eons, Soren’s emotions erode until only the search remains.
A Short Stay in Hell Summary
Spoilers follow. This section recounts the plot, including the ending.
Soren Johansson dies at forty-five and arrives at an intake office staffed by Xandern, an eight-foot satyr-like demon serving the Wise Lord Ahura Mazda. Xandern informs each arrival that Zoroastrianism was the only true religion on Earth.
An evangelical named Lester Green protests that Christ saved him, but Xandern corrects him without sympathy. Soren, a lifelong Mormon, accepts his sentence and steps into the library.
He finds his body restored to a healthy twenty-five-year-old state. Endless carpeted corridors stretch past calfskin-bound volumes, food kiosks, and sleeping rooms, with a metal railing overlooking a bottomless abyss.
A posted sign explains that this Hell follows Borges’s “The Library of Babel.” Nearly every book contains random gibberish, and only one holds his biography.
Soren befriends Elliott Callington, an agnostic World War II veteran, and Bob “Biscuit,” a homeless Vietnam veteran. Biscuit notices the library matches the Borges story he once read.
Soren runs over a thousand miles down the corridor and finds no variation and no end. The population is entirely English-speaking white Americans, a detail that unsettles him.
By Year 102, inhabitants have organized a University. Scholars celebrate rare finds like Stew Sand’s “Most Significant Text,” a single coherent sentence pulled from the gibberish.
Soren meets Rachel Hasnick, a former literary editor. They fall in love and spend a thousand years traveling the stacks together, inventing games and sharing conversation.
In Year 1145, a fanatic named Dire Dan claims God ordered him to scourge Hell. His cult, the Direites, hunts inhabitants to torture and kill them.
Cornered by the Direites, Rachel jumps into the bottomless chasm rather than be captured. Grief-stricken, Soren tackles Dire Dan over the railing and drags him into the abyss.
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Soren survives eons of freefall and repeated deaths, eventually learning to steer his body back onto the shelves. He meets Master Took, a scholar who calculates the library’s true dimensions.
Master Took’s charcoal figures show 951,312,000 books spanning light-years of depth. The math proves that finding his biography or reuniting with Rachel is practically impossible.
Centuries later, Soren catches a falling woman named Wand during another freefall. They fall in love and plan a landing, but the two are separated forever.
Trillions of years pass. Soren’s memory and emotional capacity decay until relationships carry no weight, and the search becomes his only remaining purpose.
Books Like A Short Stay in Hell
- “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges — The short story that directly supplies the setting, structure, and philosophical premise of Peck’s novella.
- Piranesi by Susanna Clarke — A solitary narrator maps an infinite surreal House, echoing Soren’s attempt to chart endless corridors.
- No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre — A room-bound afterlife that functions as a psychological Hell, sharing the mundane-purgatory structure.
- The Divine Comedy: Inferno by Dante Alighieri — A structured theological journey through Hell that examines divine justice and moral order.
- The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis — A speculative vision of the afterlife that probes human choice, salvation, and the nature of Heaven.
- The Stranger by Albert Camus — An existential narrative about meaninglessness and emotional detachment, matching Soren’s gradual numbness.
- Ice by Anna Kavan — A surreal, dreamlike landscape with a solitary pursuer, similar in tone and atmosphere.
Characters in This Book
| Character | Role |
|---|---|
| Soren Johansson | A Mormon geologist from Utah who dies at forty-five and searches the library for eons. |
| Xandern | A satyr-like demon and Yazata functionary who conducts afterlife intake interviews. |
| Lester Green | An evangelical Christian who dies during a thunderstorm and protests his sentence. |
| Julia Hanson | An atheist biology professor who learns during intake that God exists. |
| Elliott Callington | An agnostic WWII veteran who becomes Soren’s first friend in the library. |
| Larisa Sims | A woman who joins Soren’s early circle of companions. |
| Bob “Biscuit” | A homeless Vietnam veteran who identifies the library as Borges’s “The Library of Babel.” |
| Dolores | A former Detroit housewife who forms part of Soren’s early group. |
| Betty | A former prison inmate with whom Soren has a brief early relationship. |
| Master Treacle | The self-appointed head of the University in Year 102. |
| Rachel Hasnick | A former literary editor who becomes Soren’s companion for a thousand years. |
| Sandra | A calculus professor who briefly shares quarters with Soren. |
| Stew Sand | A searcher who finds Year 102’s “Most Significant Text.” |
| Dire Dan | A fanatic who founds the violent Direite cult. |
| Master Took | A scholar who calculates the library’s total book count. |
| Wand | A woman Soren meets mid-freefall and later loses. |
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What the Library Presses On
| Theme | How the Book Presents It |
|---|---|
| The Scope of Infinity | The library holds 951,312,000 volumes, and Master Took’s calculations show it spans light-years of depth. |
| Meaning in Randomness | Inhabitants celebrate single coherent sentences found among endless gibberish, such as Stew Sand’s “Most Significant Text.” |
| Love as an Anchor | Soren and Rachel spend a thousand years together, and her loss drives him to drag Dire Dan into the abyss. |
| Arbitrary Religious Dogma | Xandern tells arrivals that Zoroastrianism was the true faith, contradicting the beliefs they held while alive. |
| Erosion of Humanity | After trillions of years, Soren states that relationships no longer carry weight and only the search matters. |
Book Details at a Glance
- Genre & Subgenre: Philosophical Fiction / Speculative Fiction; Theological Horror, Dark Fantasy, Borgesian Novella
- Core Narrative Tropes: Infinite labyrinthine architecture, bizarre afterlife, existential quest, ironic salvation, temporal leaps
- Tone & Atmosphere: Reflective, melancholic, understated, existentially haunting, quietly surreal
- Primary Conflict: Person versus infinity — an impossible search for one book among 951,312,000
- Pacing Style: Episodic with drastic temporal acceleration, moving from daily accounts to eons
- Book Structure: Prologue, five numbered chapters, Appendix, About the Author
- ISBN-10: 098374842X
- ISBN-13: 978-0983748427
- Pages: 108
- Author Background: Steven L. Peck is an evolutionary ecologist and professor at Brigham Young University who writes fiction alongside his scientific work.
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