Jean-Pierre Ohl's brilliantly inventive debut novel is inspired by Charles Dickens's last work, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, left incomplete with the mystery unresolved on the author's death in
1870.
Ohl's narrator, Francois Daumal nurtures a passion for Dickens. From the moment his young eyes first light on the opening line of David Copperfield - 'Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of
my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages will show' - he is addicted. He systematically devours everything Dickens ever wrote, and develops a particular
obsession with Edwin Drood. He becomes an expert on the subject, steeped in Dickensian studies, commentaries, critiques of all kinds, from the most specialist to the most exotically
alternative.
His discovery as a student that his obsession is shared by another, the smoothly urbane and ruthlessly ambitious Michel Mangematin, marks the beginning of a deadly rivalry that will be pursued
over the following years with not only academic and worldly success at stake but also love, self-esteem, and even personal identity.
