KRAKEN explores the true-life encounter between legendary American novelists Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1856. Melville, in the midst of a spiritual journey to the Holy Land, stops to visit with his old friend Hawthorne, now the American consul in Liverpool. As they spend the evening together, they discuss and confront their, fears, failures, things of this world and the next, books and publishers, and all possible and impossible matters. "Len Jenkin not only has a vivid imagination, but he also has an artist's command of his craft." The New York Times "Len Jenkin has an unusual talent for reaching into shadowy places in the human psyche and coming up with evocative images." Journal American (Seattle) "Jenkin's plays have plenty of plot and delicious language, but the transience of experience is the main theme that runs through Jenkin's work. He manipulates theatrical illusions with a playful manner that recalls Jorge Luis Borges, to disguise meditations on mortality." Village Voice (New York)