Book by Alexander McCall Smith

Professor Dr. von Igelfeld Entertainment – Book 2 The Professor Dr. von Igelfeld Entertainment series slyly skewers academia, chronicling the comic misadventures of the endearingly awkward Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, and his long-suffering colleagues at the Institute of Romantic Philology in Germany. Readers who fell in love with Precious Ramotswe, proprietor of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, now have new cause for celebration in the protagonist of these three light-footed comic novels by Alexander McCall Smith. Welcome to the insane and rarified world of Professor 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 which has the tendency to go hilariously astray. In The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, Professor Dr. Von Igelfeld is mistaken for a veterinarian and not wanting to call attention to the faux pas, begins practicing veterinary medicine without a license. He ends up operating on a friend’s dachshund to dramatic and unfortunate effect. He also transports relics for a schismatically challenged Coptic prelate, and is pursued by marriage-minded widows on board a Mediterranean cruise ship.

In At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances, Professor Dr. von Igelfeld gets caught up in a nasty case of academic intrigue while on sabbatical at Cambridge. When he returns to Regensburg he is confronted with the thrilling news that someone from a foreign embassy has actually checked his masterwork, Portuguese Irregular Verbs, out of the Institute’s Library. As a result, he gets caught up in intrigue of a different sort on a visit to Bogota, Colombia.

Life is so unfair, and it sends many things to try Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, author of Portuguese Irregular Verbs and pillar of the Institute of Romance Philology in the proud Bavarian city of Regensburg. There is the undeserved rise of his rival (and owner of a one-legged dachshund), Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer; the interminable ramblings of the librarian, Herr Huber; and the condescension of his colleagues with regard to his unmarried state. But when his friend Ophelia Prinzel takes it upon herself to match-make, and duly produces a cheerful heiress with her own Schloss, it appears that the professor's true worth is about to be recognised. Maddening, idiotic and hugely entertaining, von Igelfeld is an inspired comic creation.

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.