THE UNDERGROUND MAN
Short-listed for the 1997 Booker Prize -- a haunting historical novel from an astonishing new British talent.Victorian England's most famous eccentric, the Duke of Portland was renowned for both his enormous wealth and for the elaborate series of tunnels he had built beneath his massive estate. The Duke, who is a fountain of nineteenth-century knowledge and curiosity, faithfully records in his journal the events that make up his days. His research extends into the fields of chiropractic medicine, and the study of auras, archaeology, and phrenology in a series of hilarious episodes that echo the New Age exploits of our own era while revealing the Duke to be a true naif: wonderfully humane, painfully shy, and untouched by the power his great wealth affords him.