Portuguese Irregular Verbs

Portuguese Irregular Verbs

"Portuguese Irregular Verbs" is both the name of a book by Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith, and the name of a fictional book - "the seminal work on Romance philology" and "a lengthy book of some twelve hundred pages" - by the main character, Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld.

The professor is a troubled German academic whose life's achievement is the eponymous "Portuguese Irregular Verbs".

The book relates his early years, an inept early academic life, stoic resolve to succeed, inept academic success, various trips, love found and lost, and most importantly his relationships with the other major characters of the book series, Professor Dr Dr ("honoris causa") Florianus Prinzel and Professor Dr Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer. All are academics at the fictional 'Institute of Romance Philology' at Regensburg, Germany.

The book has eight chapters:
# The Principles of Tennis
# Duels, and How to Fight Them
# Early Irish Pornography
# Italian Matters
# Portuguese Irregular Verbs
# Holy Man
# Dental Pain
# Death in Venice

Illustrations for the book are by Iain McIntosh.

Book Series

"Portuguese Irregular Verbs" is the first book in a series of (so far) three books by McCall Smith:

* "Portuguese Irregular Verbs" (2003)
* "The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs" (2003)
* "At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances" (2003)

External links

* [http://www.randomhouse.com/features/mccallsmith/ Author's page at Random House publishers]


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