ABOUT
THE BOOK

Following the advice of his long-suffering housekeeper, genial octogenarian Mr. Mee abandons dusty books and turns to the Internet in search of Rosier’s Encyclopaedia, a lost book proposing the philosophy of an alternative universe. Instead he finds a photograph of a naked girl reading “Ferrand and Minard: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Search for Lost Time”. Meanwhile, in the spring of 1761, the two French copyists Ferrand and Minard find themselves in possession of Rosier’s Encyclopaedia and pursued by the authorities who want to claim its secrets for themselves. The interwoven stories which follow concern Rousseau’s madness, a dying scholar’s love, and Mr. Mee’s belated discovery of sex, drugs and Jimmy Shand.