The utterly charming prequel to the New York Times-bestseller Mr Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore. San Francisco, 1969. The summer of drugs, music and a new age dawning. A young, earnest Ajax Penumbra has been given his first assignment as a Junior Acquisitions Officer - to find the single surviving copy of the Techne Tycheon, a mysterious volume that has brought and lost great fortune for anyone who has owned it. After a few weeks of rigorous hunting, Penumbra feels no closer to his goal than when he started. But late one night, after another day of dispiriting dead ends, he stumbles upon a 24-hour bookstore and the possibilities before him expand exponentially. With the help of his friend's homemade computer, an ancient map, a sunken ship and the vast shelves of the 24-hour bookstore, Ajax Penumbra might just find what he's seeking...

Attacks the critical practice of interpreting ancient Greek literature in terms of modern ideas, using the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Pindar, Plato, Thucydides and Shakespeare as examples.