Welcome to the insane and rarified world of Professor Dr Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld of the Institute of Romance Philology. Von Igelfeld is engaged in a never-ending quest to win the respect he feels certain he is due—a quest that has a tendency to go hilariously astray.

This time Professor Dr Dr von Igelfeld will have to take on a dangerous newcomer—Deputy Librarian Dr Hilda Schreiber-Ziegler. Swept in on a wave of progressive enthusiasm, she seems determined to drag the department into the modern age. At first this is a minor nuisance, but when Dr Schreiber-Ziegler attempts to remove twenty-one of the twenty-two copies of Professor Dr Dr von Igelfeld’s seminal work, the thousand-page Portuguese Irregular Verbs . . . Well, things have gone a bit too far. As a result, von Igelfeld mounts a campaign for the exalted position of director of the Institute against none other than the upstart Dr Schreiber-Ziegler herself. But the politicking will have to wait; von Igelfeld has been offered a visiting fellowship among the ivory towers of Oxford, where he will have to stave off an MI6 recruitment attempt and the effusive attention of a young American scholar. Still, von Igelfeld has always heeded the clarion call of duty, especially when it comes with a larger office.

"Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Little, Brown, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, a Hachette U.K. company, London, in 2021"--Copyright page.

Acclaim for the Portuguese Irregular Verbs series

“Delightfully silly…. [von Igelfeld] is a literary Mr. Magoo.” —The Washington Post

“A comedic jewel… [At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances] attains a level of sublime nonsense reminiscent of Woody Allen’s Bananas.” —The New York Times

“In the halls of academe, a setting fraught with ego-driven battles for power and prestige [McCall Smith] has rendered yet another one-of-a-kind character: the bumbling but brilliant Dr. Mortiz-Maria von Igelfeld . . . . [a] deftly rendered trilogy [with] endearingly eccentric characters.” —Chicago Sun-Times

“Filled with comic characters, all academics of a particularly stripe. . . . McCall Smith has the same gift that John Mortimer has in making boring conversations hilarious—the atmosphere in the Institute of Romance Philology’s coffee room is very like the one-upmanship and backbiting in Horace Rumpole’s chambers. Academia can be a hoot, and this series proves it.” —Booklist

“Professor von Igelfeld is a comic gem. . . . McCall Smith skewers the pomposity of academic pretension with an irresistible, deadpan insouciance.” —BlogCritics