Real Life: a Novel is a book in the tradition of Italo Calvino’s ground-breaking IF ON A WINTER NIGHT’S A TRAVELER. It is at once a gripping and enchanting story which takes the reader away from their own dire, difficult, dark existence and allows them to escape to a bright new world, and an exposure of that bright new world. Where do truth and fiction part company? Is our hero fighting an exciting military campaign in Russia, or sitting in a bar in Amsterdam? This entirely fictional, unusually original extravaganza is a delight from the first to the last. Pfeijffer bears no comparison but if needs must, the Dutch David Mitchell will do.