Overview

"Jorge Luis Borges is the hero of this literary whodunit by one of Brazil's most celebrated writers. Vogelstein is a loner who has always lived among books. Suddenly, fate grabs hold of his insignificant life and carries him off to Buenos Aires, to a conference on Edgar Allan Poe, the inventor of the modern detective story. There Vogelstein meets his idol, Jorge Luis Borges, and for reasons that a mere passion for literature cannot explain, he finds himself at the center of a murder investigation that involves arcane demons, the mysteries of the Kaballah, the possible destruction of the world, and the Elizabethan magus John Dee's theory of the ""Eternal Orangutan,"" which, given all the time in the world, would end up writing all the known books in the cosmos. Verissimo's small masterpiece is at once a literary tour de force and a brilliant mystery novel."

Full Product Details

9780811215923

Table of Contents

Reviews

Verissimo unveils the secret with great cleverness and grim humor.

"""Verissimo unveils the secret with great cleverness and grim humor."""

Murder at an Edgar Allan Poe symposium pairs a modest, middle-aged scholar with his aging idol, in an exquisite feat of literary legerdemain by Brazil's best-selling writer. Vogelstein has always wanted to meet Jorge Luis Borges. Now, through a stroke of luck-or fate?-his dream may come true at the annual conclave of Poe specialists, to be held this year in Buenos Aries. Borges, whose own detective fiction advanced the genre into metaphysical realms, has agreed to attend. The other main event will be the inevitable showdown between three scholars whose vitriol concluded the previous year's conference with charges of plagiarism and deceit. Shortly after the proceedings begin, one of the three is found murdered in a locked room with no means of escape. Local police detective Cuervo (translation: Raven) summons Vogelstein, the only witness to the murder scene before it was compromised, to tell all to Borges. Ensconced in the great writer's library, the two scholars explore a labyrinth of clues, including the positioning of the body to form an X, three playing cards and a missing lecture. As ratiocination fails them, Borges and Vogelstein widen their mental search to examine the darker implications of a 16th-century mathematician's theory: an orangutan, given enough ink, a sturdy quill and infinite space, would write not only Hamlet but all of world literature, including the Necronomicon, the fabled book of the dead, which secret societies from the Kabbalists to the Freemasons have worked to suppress. One scholar scheduled to speak at the symposium intended to present evidence that Poe encrypted the Necronomicon in his writings. . . and another vowed to stop him. That Verissimo (The Club of Angels, 2002, etc.) covers all this-and more-in one slim volume might suggest that he indulges in occult practices of his own. The other explanation, of course, is that he's a writer worthy of international renown. Think Dan Brown is the craftiest cryptographer in town? Nevermore. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Margaret Jull Costa is the award-winning translator of works by Eca de Quieros, Javier Marias, and Jose Saramago. Luis Fernando Verissimo, son of writer Erico Verissimo, is one of Brazil's best-known literary figures. He is a cartoonist, saxaphone player, and the author of novels and newspaper cronicas.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available