Author:Isaac Asimov
Each month the Black Widowers, an urbane club of cerebral adventurers, meet at the Milano Restaurant for dinner. And each month a single guest is invited and subjected to a genial but intense grilling on the meaning of his existence. Inevitably the guest confides some puzzling question or strange occurrence in his life - the inexplicable disappearance of a good luck charm, for instance, or how a four-leaf clover can identify a traitor - tantalizing conundrums that the great Holmes himself would have enjoyed solving.
When the Black Widowers are stumped (as invariably happens), they turn to their faithful waiter Henry, who serves up perfectly grilled salmon and devilishly clever answers with equal aplomb.
A classic, perhaps the supreme American novel
—— John Carey , Sunday TimesIt is a vindication of the role poetry can fulfil as a source of inspiration and encouragement
—— Glasgow HeraldGenerals tend to win their reputations at the cost of other men's lives. By an anomaly unique in military history Wavell's own reputation has reached its widest range - certainly in the English-speaking world - not because of his prowess as a soldier or a proconsul, but because of his identification with a small miscellany containing a selection of other men's verses
—— Ronald Lewin