Rabelaisian

“Then,” he added, “there’s the wordplay, the dance of literary references, the Rabelaisian humor, all packed into what I like to think of as ‘fairy tales for adults.’

It is superficially a mystery, with a mismatched pair, the reserved physicist Wang Miao and the Rabelaisian cop Shi Qiang, investigating a rash of suicides among high-level scientists.

This is one of the more tender moments in a tough old-fashioned bildungsroman that meanders more than it moves, with its creator’s customary herks, jerks, digressions and Rabelaisian excesses.

His first order of business was to settle into the Presidential Suite at the Hotel Loftleidir and order one of his Rabelaisian meals, with bowls and bowls of skyr.

Professor Longhair’s music, with its looping ragtime-style piano riffs, is the recognized soundtrack to the Rabelaisian event, and he is explicit on this point in “Go to the Mardi Gras.”