Mr Mee (Dedalus Original Fiction in Paperback) - Softcover

Crumey, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1909232947 ISBN 13: 9781909232945

Publisher: Dedalus Limited, 2015

Synopsis

'The playful preoccupation with alternative realities that dominated Scots author Crumey’s previous fiction (including Pfitz and D’Alembert’s Principle) also informs this richly amusing novel about the search for an 18th-century encyclopedia that supposedly disproves the existence of the universe. Crumey’s wonderfully obsessive characters include the crotchety title figure (an elderly book collector), the lissome “life-scientist†who acquaints him with the world outside books, a perceptive college teacher of French literature, and a pair of bachelor copyists (and autodidacts—who are dead ringers for Flaubert’s ineffably pompous Bouvard and Pécuchet). Rattling back and forth between two centuries, this agreeably serpentine tale speaks volumes about the folly of scholarly preoccupation and the unreliability of received wisdom, while never neglecting to entertain the bedazzled reader. Borges and Calvino would have approved.'

Starred Review in Kirkus

'Crumey tells [his] tale with elegance and humor, and in rich detail. His immense talent reveals itself most potently in his ability to find remarkable connections in otherwise disparate intellectual concepts conceived over the course of several centuries, and then to turn those connections into a coherent and lively story. . . The many surprises and twists [in this book] provide a rare and spectacular reading experience . . . Mr. Mee is a challenging book, but it's one to savour.'

Andrew C. Ervin in The Washington Post Book World

About this title

About the Author

Andrew Crumey was born in Glasgow in 1961. He read theoretical physics and mathematics at St Andrews University and Imperial College in London, before doing post-doctoral research at Leeds University on nonlinear dynamics.After a spell of being the literary editor at Scotland on Sunday he now combines teaching creative writing at Northumbria University with his writing. He is the author of seven novels: Music, in a Foreign Language (1994), Pfitz (1995), D'Alembert's Principle (1996),Mr Mee (2000), Mobius Dick (2004), Sputnik Caledonia (2008) and The Secret Knowledge (2013).

Review

"Crumey is a confident narrator, and his book has a heart as well as a brain. It is not only an intellectual treat but a moving meditation on aspiration and desire." -- Hilary Mantel, The New York Times

"Musing on Rousseau, the French encyclopedists and the vagaries of chance and identity, Crumey has written another novel of ideas in the grand tradition of Calvino, Borges and Kundera." -- Publishers Weekly, Starred review

About this edition

• Publisher: Dedalus Limited
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1909232947
• ISBN 13: 9781909232945
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 344