The Visiting Professor - by Robert Littell (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Lemuel Falk, a theoretical "chaoticist," has been denied permission to leave Russia for the last twenty-three years, likely because he knows a few state secrets. Even he is surprised--and wary--when his twenty-fourth request is approved, and he is offered a position as visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Chaos-Related Studies in upstate New York.

But as soon as Professor Falk arrives in America, he is plunged into a new kind of chaos--including a high-stakes academic catfight, an affair with a much-younger hairdresser, and cascading offers from domestic spies looking to capitalize on his knowledge--and soon finds himself playing amateur detective at the behest of local police. While he helps hunt for a dangerous serial killer, he grapples with ghosts from his own past in Russia.

In this wholly original novel, Littell explores chaos theory, questions of faith, and the ironies of contemporary America.

Review Quotes

"An engrossing suspense-filled thriller."
--Sunday Telegraph

"A hugely impressive novel."
--The Guardian

"Forsaking his customary thriller territory, Littell (The Revolutionist) here finds fertile new ground in the farther reaches of mathematics, which prove a wellspring of rich and consistently surprising comedy . . . Littell's fast-paced satire is by turns bawdy, cerebral and touching."
--Publishers Weekly

"Quirky characters and linguistic byplay insure the book's appeal to sophisticated readers."
--Library Journal

"Beyond the basic chaos of the universe, Lemuel creates a good deal of the garden variety through his ignorance of American idioms and culture and his dealings with students at a nearby university. Along the way, he works to discover the identity of a serial killer, which after all is just a study of randomness--'his life's passion.' Heavy-hitting humor from the author of The Once and Future Spy."
--Booklist

About the Author