Dhalgren (Samuel Delany, 1975)

Whatever has befallen Bellona prevents all radio and television signals, even phone messages, from entering or leaving the city—and may have created a rift in space-time itself: One night the perpetual cloud cover parts to reveal two moons in the darkness. One day a red sun swollen to hundreds of times the size it ordinarily appears rises to terrify the populace, then sets—and the same featureless cloud cover returns, with no hint that it was ever otherwise. Street signs and landmarks shift constantly, while time appears to contract and dilate. Buildings burn for days, but are never consumed, while others burn and later show no signs of damage. Gangs roam the nighttime streets, their members hidden within holographic projections of gigantic insects or mythological creatures. The few people left in Bellona struggle with survival, boredom, and each other. It is their reactions to (and dealings with) the strange happenings and isolation in the city that are the focus of the novel, rather than the happenings themselves.

The story's protagonist is a nameless drifter, nicknamed "Kid" (also referred to as "the Kid", "Kidd", and often just "kid"), who wears only one sandal, shoe, or boot. He appears to be intermittently schizophrenic: Not only does the novel end in schizoid babble (which recurs at various points in the text), he has memories of a stay in a mental hospital, and his perception of the "changes in reality" sometimes differs from that of the other characters. He also suffers from significant memory loss.