'The playful preoccupation with alternative realities that dominated Scots author Crumey s previous fiction (including Pfitz and D Alembert s Principle) also informs this richly amusing novel about the search for an 18th-century encyclopedia that supposedly disproves the existence of the universe. Crumey s wonderfully obsessive characters include the crotchety title figure (an elderly book collector), the lissome life-scientist who acquaints him with the world outside books, a perceptive college teacher of French literature, and a pair of bachelor copyists (and autodidacts who are dead ringers for Flaubert s ineffably pompous Bouvard and Pecuchet). Rattling back and forth between two centuries, this agreeably serpentine tale speaks volumes about the folly of scholarly preoccupation and the unreliability of received wisdom, while never neglecting to entertain the bedazzled reader. Borges and Calvino would have approved.' Starred Review in Kirkus 'Crumey tells his] tale with elegance and humor, and in rich detail. His immense talent reveals itself most potently in his ability to find remarkable connections in otherwise disparate intellectual concepts conceived over the course of several centuries, and then to turn those connections into a coherent and lively story. . . The many surprises and twists in this book] provide a rare and spectacular reading experience . . . Mr. Mee is a challenging book, but it's one to savour.' Andrew C. Ervin in The Washington Post Book World"