Reviews
This is a fine book... Irwin has travelled far and profitably, indeed, into the history of chess, into geometry and algebra, into mythology, into alchemy, into the culture of labyrinths, and more besides.
[Irwin] has probed the labyrinthine depths principally of Poe and Borges, using the analytic tools of Jung, Lacan, and Derrida, and a score of other psychological interpreters of fiction... The result is dazzling.
[A] learned, capacious, and ultimately amazing book.
John Irwin has written another wonderful book.
A masterful blend of literary criticism, philosophy, game theory, classical learning, the history of science, and the occult.