Book Review (X3): The Professor Von Igelfeld Entertainments

Alexander McCall Smith, the author of the wildly popular No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, has a lesser known series of strict literate comedy, centered around a German University Romance Philology Department. Portuguese Irregular Verbs, The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, and At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances follow the misadventures of Professor Doctor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld. Each of the three is more reasonably termed a novella than a novel, due to their brevity (clocking in the high 120s0: perfect for a bath! They were collected in a single volume titled The 2 1/2 Pillars of Wisdom, I believe.

Von Igelfeld is joined in educational intrigue and slapstick skullduggery by his best friend Prinzel and nemesis Unterholzer. From Venice to India, backwoods America to Cambridge, von Igelfeld doesn't miss out on an opportunity for hilarious misunderstandings.

The stories in these books never cease to make me smile, if not laugh out loud. Give them a try.