"Wittgenstein" is the nickname of a philosophy don at Cambridge (we never learn the character's real name) who is so-called by his students because of his intensity, his brooding melancholy and his habit of utterly gnomic aphorisms *sample: "One day, logic will whisper in our ears. Logic will say the kindest words. We will mistake it for roaring ... We will confuse it with the howling wind ...") The novel is told from the point of view of Peters, a Northern undergraduate who falls in love with Wittgenstein. But Wittgenstein is not an easy man to love - almost too brilliant to live, tortured by thought, and by the suicide of his mathematical genius brother, he's constantly on the verge of a crack-up. Lars Iyer also captures the ceaseless ironic banter and the heavy drink-and-drug intake of the undergraduates. The style is unfailingly funny and felicitous. And it's just so clever. Think Martin Amis meets Nietzsche. It's not much longer than a novella, but it has all the heft of a big fat novel.

Brandon Robshaw reviews Wittgenstein Jr in The Independent on Sunday.

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