This book is so differently crafted from anything else, it's difficult to describe... If interested just check out the reviews on Amazon.com to get a feel for this thing. Also, as a rough description, I can offer up the author's own words; this self-referential statement appeared near the end of Chapter Eight:

"I have had the idea of writing a novel composed only of the beginnings of novels. The protagonist could be a Reader who is continually interrupted. The Reader buys the new novel A by the author Z. But it is a defective copy, he can’t go beyond the beginning. . . . He returns to the bookshop to have the volume exchanged. . . .

I could write it all in the second person: you, Reader. . . . I could also introduce a young lady, the Other Reader, and a counterfeiter-translator, and an old writer who keeps a diary like this diary. . . .

   But I wouldn’t want the young lady Reader, in escaping the Counterfeiter, to end up in the arms of the Reader. I will see to it that the Reader sets out on the trail of the Counterfeiter, hiding in some very distant country, so the Writer can remain alone with the young lady, the Other Reader.

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