New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001. dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - A novel about literary sleuthing by this Booker Prize winning author - it tells the "story of Phineas G. Nanson, a disenchanted young graduate student who decides to escape the world of postmodern literary theory and immerse himself in the messiness of 'real life' by writing a biography of a great biographer.. . But Phineas quickly discovers that facts can be unreliable, and a 'whole life' hard to find. . . . Phineas tracks his subjects' journeys to the deserts of Africa and the maelstroms of the Arctic in a series of adventures that are by turns intellectual and comic, scientific and erotic." SIGNED on the title page. 305 pp. ISBN: 0-375411143.