Most people who read Alexander McCall Smith are familiar with his series of detective novels set in Botswana, "The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency". These are charming, draw a wonderful picture of a beautiful country and are super detective fiction.(I highly recommend them!) But McCall Smith has also turned his author’s skills towards another venue, that of a university in Germany, and has written a slender trilogy that is sure to make you laugh, not keep you guessing until the final page.
The
"Professor Dr. von Igelfeld Entertainment" trilogy:
"Portuguese Irregular Verbs"; "The Finer Points of
Sausage Dogs"; and "At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances"
draw on the author’s experiences with higher education and he focuses his dry
wit with absolute precision for its targets.
Anyone who has slogged
through University will be rolling on the floor laughing at the
good Professor Dr. and his misadventures with his stuffy, fusty
academic friends. A tenured Ph.D. friend of mine had to
return the books to me, saying, "They cut too close to the
bone!" "I actually know people like this in the
University!"
These books are slender(128 pages each); and
perfect for an airplane read, or a read while waiting for a bus or
train. The only downside I could think of is that the other
passengers would be looking at you strangely as you convulse in
laughter.
(Parental alert: None - children who are old enough to read these books and find them funny won’t find anything offensive in them - except perhaps what happens to the sausage dog.)
The plots revolve around academic politics, of which it is said, "they
are the most vicious, since there is absolutely nothing at stake".
Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld of the Institute of Romance Philology is engaged in a never-ending quest to win the respect he feels certain he is due - he is quick to take offense and slow to forgive. His clawing his way up the ladder of academic politics always goes awry, with results both ludicrous and highly picturesque.
In Portuguese Irregular Verbs, Professor Dr von Igelfeld learns to play tennis, and forces a college chum to enter into a duel that results in a nipped nose. He also takes a field trip to Ireland where he becomes acquainted with the rich world of archaic Irishisms, and he develops an aching infatuations with a dentist fatale! Ohh la la! Along the way he takes two ill-fated Italian sojourns, the first merely uncomfortable, the second definitely dangerous.
In The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, Professor Dr von Igelfeld is mistaken for a veterinarian, and not wanting to call attention to the faux pas, begins practicing vetinerinary medicine without a license. He ends up operating on a friend’s dachshund to dramatic and unfortunate effect.(The doggie lives.) He also transports relics for a schismaticaly challenged Coptic prelate and is pursued by marriage-minded widows on board a Mediterranean cruise ship.
In At The Villa of Reduced Circumstances, Professor Dr von Igelfeld gets caught up in a nasty case of academic intrigue while on sabbatical at Cambridge. When he returns to Regensburg he is confronted with the thrilling news that someone from a foreign embassy has actually checked his master-work, Portuguese Irregular Verbs, out of the Institute’s Library. As a result, he gets caught up in intrigue of a different sort on a visit to Bogota, Columbia.
(Now here, a full confession - I typed these blurbs from the back of the novels - so rest assured, dear readers, there is no more plot given away here than you would get if you picked up the book in the bookstore!)
I enjoyed these books even MORE than I enjoyed the Number 1 Ladies
Detective Agency - and that is saying a lot. If you are a student,
take a break from your studies and read these little books. If you are a graduate of University of any kind, pick them up for your daily commute reading. You won’t
regret it!:-)