From a Booker Prize finalist, a novel that offers “a striking and effective blend of past and present, literary sleuthing and travelogue” (Publishers Weekly).
This unique, sprawling tale intertwines two stories: a modern-day one in which an English professor journeys to Stockholm, and then St. Petersburg, for an academic conference on the French philosopher Diderot amid the tumult of early post-Soviet Russia; and another in which Diderot himself visits the palace of Catherine the Great in the late eighteenth century.
What follows is a “genuinely funny” intellectual adventure that takes us from coup to countercoup, from bickering academics to elderly librarians—and into the enigmatic secrets of the Diderot Project (Library Journal).
“At once a joyous romp through the groves of academe and a rousing paean to the life of the mind.” —Booklist
