Longlisted for The Booker Prize and the Impac Prize it sparkles with imagination and wit and is a real joy to read. Elderly Scottish bookworm Mr Mee searches the internet for a legendary encyclopaedia outlining an 18thC quantum theory. Instead he enters a strange new world of cyber-hoaxers and online pornography. Meanwhile a university lecturer describes research on Jean-Jacques Rousseau and an infatuation with one of his students. And in the third strand of this unique comedy of ideas, set in the spring of 1761, Rousseau's neighbours hold the key to the writer's madness, the lost encyclopaedia, and Mr Mee himself. AUTHOR: Andrew Crumey was born in Glasgow in 1961. He read theoretical physics and mathematics at St Andrews University and Imperial College in London, before doing post-doctoral research at Leeds University on nonlinear dynamics. After a spell of being the literary editor at Scotland on Sunday he now combines teaching creative writing at Northumbria University with his writing. He lives in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. REVIEWS: 'The book is fabulous stuff: erudite but not patronising, elegantly and simply written, jumping ambitiously across the centuries with a good dash of down0to-earth entertainment.'