Jean-Pierre Ohl's brilliantly inventive debut novel is inspired by Charles Dickens's last work, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, left incomplete, and the mystery unresolved, on the author's death in 1870. Ohl's narrator, Francois Daumal nurtures a passion for Dickens. From the moment his young eyes first light on the opening line of David Copperfield - ? Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages will show ' ? he is addicted. He systematically devours everything Dickens ever wrote, and develops a particular obsession with Edwin Drood. He becomes an expert on the subject, steeped in Dickensian studies, commentaries, critiques of all kinds, from the most specialist to the most exotically alternative. His discovery as a student that his obsession is shared by another, the smoothly urbane and ruthlessly ambitious Michel Mangematin, marks the beginning of a deadly rivalry that will be pursued over the following years with not only academic and worldly success at stake but also love, self-estem, and even personal identity. Mr Dick or The Tenth Book is an exhilarating entertainment, a homage to Dickens and to the creative power of literature to animate and illuminate our lives. AUTHOR: Jean-Pierre Ohl is a bookseller at Talence, near Bordeaux. Mr Dick or The Tenth Book is his first novel. In France it won three literary prizes: Bourse Thyde Monnier 2004, the Prix Michel Dard 2005 and the Prix Emmanuel Robles 2005.
