Dr Ragab's Universal Language, By Robert Twigger

There is a genre of modern fiction which one might style the Quirky Novel. It generally features supernatural events, stories within stories, swift transitions in time and place, an enigmatic sage as a key character, and much display of curious lore on the part of the author. Novels like this can be tiresome but Dr Ragab's Universal Language, though it fits the bill, is far from being so, as it is so well written.

We begin in modern-day Ealing with the narrator, a bunker aficionado. He travels to Germany to see some papers for a book he's working on, which happen to be stored in an underground bunker. He acquires a manuscript written by one Uncle Hertwig, who was imprisoned in the bunker after the war. To escape, Hertwig must master the Universal Language, taught to him by the enigmatic sage Dr Ragab in 1920s Cairo. Ragab is charismatic, his teaching methods unorthodox, and he possesses the gift of invisibility. Our narrator discovers that Hertwig is still alive and journeys to Cairo to meet him... It's all hokum – but it's clever, funny and thought-provoking hokum.