To the Hermitage

From a Booker Prize finalist, a novel that offers ';a striking and effective blend of past and present, literary sleuthing and travelogue' (Publishers Weekly). This unique, sprawling tale intertwines two stories: a modern-day one in which an English professor journeys to Stockholm, and then St. Petersburg, for an academic conference on the French philosopher Diderot amid the tumult of early post-Soviet Russia; and another in which Diderot himself visits the palace of Catherine the Great in the late eighteenth century. What follows is a ';genuinely funny' intellectual adventure that takes us from coup to countercoup, from bickering academics to elderly librariansand into the enigmatic secrets of the Diderot Project (Library Journal). ';At once a joyous romp through the groves of academe and a rousing paean to the life of the mind.' Booklist