Product Description

Alexander McCall Smith, best-selling author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, has turned his hand to humour. The delightful result is a creation of comic genius. For in the unnaturally tall form of Professor Doctor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, we are invited to meet a memorable character whose sublime insouciance is a blend of the cultivated pomposity of Frasier Crane and of Inspecteur Clouseau's hapless gaucherie. Von Igelfeld inhabits the rarefied world of the Institute of Romance Philology at Regensburg, a world he shares with his equally tall and equally ridiculous colleagues, Professors Florianus Prinzel and Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer. Their unlikely adventures are described in three deliciously funny instalments: Portuguese Irregular Verbs, The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs and At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15237 in Books
• Published on: 2004-11-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Review
'There is something almost divinely appealing about the way Alexander McCall Smith writes about daily life in Botswana ... it is hard to think of a contemporary writer more genuinely engaging ... his novels are also extremely funny: I find it impossible to think about them without smiling' Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday

About the Author
Alexander McCall Smith is a Professor of Medical Law as well as an author who has written over 50 books on a wide range of subjects. His extraordinary fan base now ranges from Anthony Kiedis (Red Hot Chilli Peppers lead singer) to Martina Navratilova and Alex James (from Blur).

Customer Reviews

Gentle comedy from a bygone age
Although this book is set in roughly contemporary times the style and character of the work harks back to a gentler age. The comedy is subtle and restrained rather than laugh-out-loud, the characters are the aimiable types one could find in Wodehouse or Jerome. In fact, had this been written 50 years ago it would have been a prime candidate for filming as an "Ealing comedy".

The three novellas collected in this volume chart the progress of von Igelfeld through a series of unlikely escapades in his home town of Regensberg, Switzerland, Venice, Ireland, England and finally South America. In each case his insouciant academic view of the world is never displaced by the real life events taking place around him. Even being caught up in a revolution in Colombia isnt enough to stop him worrying whether a rival professor is using his desk back at the University.

This is bathos at its best, each of the characters blissfully unaware of the comedy they are in. No wisecracks or one-liners, no slapstic or satire - just slghtly foolish people trying hard not to be.

The book is a real treat. Refeshing and funny.

Wonderful humour - engaging hero
While this comic trilogy is unlikely to raise belly laughs it is a lovely picaresque exercise in social comedy and mild farce featuring the rather woolly minded and gauche Professor von Iglefeld. McCall Smith's deadpan style enable us to accept the Prof's amazing misguided adventures where he gets into all kind of Meldrew-like scrapes with south-american revolutionaries, irish farmers, acadmic rivals and colleagues. As previous reviewers have mentioned, this is understated satire and gentle bathos, more akin to bygone times eg Ealing Films - there's no bad language or graphic violence and minimal innuendo. It's also quite different from his Detective Agency / 44 Scotland Street stuff. I hope Prof Iglefeld has many more adventures.

Better than Precious
I received this book for Christmas and hadn't noticed it before.
Having previously read three of the No1LD series, and becoming a bit tired of the characters, I approached this with caution. How could this be any good when all the marketing millions were being diverted to Precious and Botswana? THIS TRILOGY IS BETTER. This deserves to be in the limelight - it is the funniest book I've EVER READ - EVER. The tale about the impromptu speech in the second novello was hilarity at it's very best. This has restored my faith in the author and I'm currently resuming my journey through Botswana. Buy it, borrow it, read it.