Mr. Mee, Andrew Crumey, New Book

Told in turns from the point of view of the endearing, utterly guileless Mr. Mee, two eighteenth-century French philosophers, and a middle-aged university professor, Andrew Crumey's book concerns the creation and mysterious disappearance of Rosier's Encyclopedia, a potentially explosive text written more than 200 years ago that purportedly disproves the existence of the universe. When Mr. Mee comes across a reference to the Xanthics, an obsolete sect that maintained unorthodox beliefs about fire, his hunt for more information compels him to try locating a copy of the singular encyclopedia. Technologically ignorant, Mr. Mee is at last persuaded by his addled housekeeper to conduct a modern search for the book on the Internet. But instead of finding additional clues about Rosier's Encyclopedia, Mr. Mee stumbles upon an image of a naked woman reading from an intriguing text....