Borges and the Eternal Orangutans

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.

"Brazilian author Verissimo's delightful novel simultaneously caricatures the complicated codes that comprise detective stories and spins a whodunit of paternity, academic intrigue, 16th-century occultism and orangutans. The action occurs at the annual meeting of the Israfel Society, an eccentric organization devoted to the study of Edgar Allan Poe, which Vogelstein, a sheltered teacher and translator, decides to attend in the hopes of meeting his hero, Jorge Luis Borges. When Vogelstein discovers the unlikable Rotkopf, another conference attendee, stabbed to death in front of a mirror, it falls to Borges and Vogelstein to solve the crime. Is the murderer Professor Ikisara, who was angry at having to travel to Buenos Aires for the conference and at having been trampled, twice, by Rotkopf during the welcoming cocktail party? Just as suspicious is Oliver Johnson, the humiliated butt of an elaborate scholarly joke perpetrated by the victim. But maybe it was Hastur, 'a malign spirit' rising from the Necronomicon, a list of every evil being on Earth. Will the amateur sleuths uncover the motive and the murderer, or will they accuse someone based on potentially fruitful 'literary possibilities'? Borges claims that one 'write[s] to remember,' but Verissimio (The Club of Angels) demonstrates that one also writes to pay homage, to provide pleasure and to have fun." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)