The irregular and monstrous births

The reader, the cyberbook, costs, say, $200. The wafers cost pennies. The reader, the human, is thus ever after buying a handful of wafers instead of books […]

Although he meets von Humboldt by the end of the first chapter, it will take the whole book for there to be a meeting of minds between these two giants of the German intellect, with Kehlmann boxing and coxing between the two chapter by chapter.

The couple will live in London since Mr. Hicks’s job keeps him close to the decoratable homes of Mayfair and Belgravia.