I'll admit that I adore a good novel about academic life, as many English majors who've gone on to other things tend to do. And a novel that promises a view into a historical moment--particularly one relevant to my studies--is one I can't miss. Thus, I had to read Julia Kristeva's The Samurai, a novel written by a preeminent theorist that includes fictionalized portraits of her contemporary intellectuals. While the novel lived up to its promise, the view into the world was one of the sensual and exalted world in which the characters lived, but it lacked something of the human ordinariness that even the most elite experience. I'd recommend this for readers interested in the milieu, but I'll add the caveat that, as a novel, the work left me cold. ( )