In this brooding and obsessive novel, Ansgar Allen recounts the story of a nameless man who attends a funerary wake with no other distraction than papers that once belonged to the body on display. The deceased considered the papers to be his magnum opus, a text that unraveled everything he had been educated to accept, beginning with the spectre of religion-namely The Church of Christ, Scientist-and ending with the very fabric of educated, civilized...