Doctor Criminale

by Malcolm Bradbury

"In Malcolm Bradbury's virtuoso novel of intellectual pursuit, narrator and subject are at opposite poles of the universe of letters. Urbane, polymathic, multilingual, Doctor Bazlo Criminale, man from nowhere, citizen of the world, is a mega-star in the cultural firmament - a critic, novelist, playwright, and philosopher published, quoted, and feted in every corner of the globe, around which he seems to be in endless transit. He is the embodiment of the modern European philosopher, the "Great Thinker of the Age of Glasnost."" "Naive, anonymous, provincial, Francis Jay has ambitions only to break into the modern media. When he's asked to research a TV documentary on Bazlo Criminale, he steps into a world as far outside his experience as it is beyond his comprehension. It should be a simple matter of research. Criminale's life has been conducted in print, but television's demands are more immediate: the media need to know what Criminale looks like, where he comes from, who he sleeps with