great fun ( )

I was drawn to the book by a passing reference in the London Review of Books to The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium as "an epistolary novel and a comic masterpiece." "Surely such things no longer existed?" I asked myself and clicked on the "Order now" button. The book is as original as its storyline isn't: on the face of it, it's an exchange of letters between a fat and aging American and his young, svelte and exotic wife. Their plan is to find a long-lost treasure of the Medici family. While the husband is languishing in the sizzling heat of Florida, trying to infiltrate the higher echelons of Miami society in order to secure funding for their expedition, his adorable wife is rummaging through European archives for ancient manuscripts, looking for clues about the treasure's present location. Can they find the treasure? Will their love stand the tests of physical separation and assorted European temptations? If you are put off already, don't be. Contrary to its apparent silliness, the book is delightfully clever and zany. A postmodern send-up of historical mystery novels, it's full of made-up erudition, brilliant language play and sham anthropology. A one of a kind. ( )

"What is that 'Waste Land'? It's perhaps a nick name of Arizona?" ( )