Product Description

Is there anything funny about German professors? This novel features the endless mishaps of the inimitable Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #137449 in Books
• Published on: 2003-08-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

Customer Reviews

5 Stars Are Not Enough
This exquisite little book is the first of what one hopes will be many accounts of the doings (adventures is perhaps too exciting a word) of Herr Doctor Professor von Igelfeld.

McCall Smith pokes very gentle but pointed fun at, inter alia, academics, librarians, landladies and a certain sort of unselfconscious pomposity that protects the perpetrator from even noticing the damage he is wreaking. Think George Grossmith, P G Wodehouse, Inspector Clouseau or even Mr Bean!

If you have read "Death in Venice" the final story, in which the Professor, visiting Venice, finds himself attempting to avoid the attentions of a Polish teenager, is just too delicious for words!

More irresistable writing from McCall Smith
I am pleased to say that this book and the others in the series are as good as the Ladies Number One Detective Agency. We follow the (mis)fortunes of Professor Iglefeld, a slightly pompous German Professor with very obscure interests in philology who has, as the inside cover suggests, the kind of success or lack of that Inspector Clouseau has. This book is really like a collection of Short stories linked by the Professor's one published work about Portugese verbs. Each little story is full of gentle humour and you are kept interested to the end. I cannot think of many books that I take as much pleasure in as these.They are pure escapism. I am a teacher and I saved these books for the begining of the new term at school when I needed something to ease my mind. They have done the job! My only quibble is the price. Perhaps a little steep! Nevertheless, you will be paying for some wonderful entertainment. So I would say it is worth it!

Slim Pickings
I have read - and really enjoyed - the "No 1 Ladies Detective Agency" series, so I thought that I would branch out and see what McCall Smith's other novels were like.

I found this to be mildly amusing so long as you have some appreciation of academic jealousies and intrigues, but I thought that the whole area is covered much more amusingly and entertainly - as well as being better written - by David Lodge.

I was a bit dissappointed in the book.