Portuguese Irregular Verbs
Books | Fiction / Humorous / General
3.6
Alexander McCall Smith
A deliciously entertaining new series by the bestselling author of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency The many fans of Precious Ramotswe will find further cause for celebration in the protagonist of Alexander McCall Smith’s irresistibly funny trilogy, the eminent (if shamefully under-read) philologist Professor Dr. Mortiz-Maria von Igelfeld of the Institute at Regensburg. Unnaturally tall, hypersensitive to slights, and oblivious to his own frequent gaucheries, von Igelfeld is engaged in a never-ending quest to win the respect he knows is due him.Portuguese Irregular Verbs follows the Professor from a busman’s holiday researching old Irish obscenities to a flirtation with a desirable lady dentist. In The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, von Igelfeld practices veterinary medicine without a license, transports relics for a schismatically challenged Coptic prelate and is mobbed by marriage-minded widows on board a Mediterranean cruise ship. In At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances, the final novel in the trilogy, we find our hero suffering the slings of academic intrigue as a visiting fellow at Cambridge, and the slings of outrageous fortune in an eventful Columbian adventure.
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Author
Alexander McCall Smith
Pages
128
Publisher
Knopf Canada
Published Date
2010-04-30
ISBN
0307370372 9780307370372
Community ReviewsSee all
"Not as fun as his Number One Women's Detective Agency series. This series follows a philology professor in Germany and his pedestrian "adventures." What makes it comical is that as an academic, he has only known the world of the mind, and going out into the real world introduces him to all sorts of conundrums. One redeeming factor is the book is very short and a quick read, with each chapter a brief vignette that can be read as a stand-alone short story. I'll read the other books in the series, but I long for the dialog and cultural insight offered by the detective agency series.<br/><br/>In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I was a Portuguese minor in college, so I've studied Portuguese irregular verbs and even taken a graduate-level class in Portuguese philology. However, I am a little more socially adept than this professor, but only slightly."
Jon Christensen