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Imagine a small fishing village on the edge of the world Its inhabitants are progressive and content The surroundings are pleasant The village is economically sustainable Although remote, it maintains a cosmopolitan attitude No serious crime have ever been committed—for example, murder In his playful and brilliant final novel, Harry Mathews — who died in 2017 — takes us to this contemporary Arcadia But, as is the case in the fictional world of Harry Mathews, little is as it seems   The Solitary Twin begins properly with pillow talk Two people, a behavioural psychologist named Bernice and a publisher named Andreas, arrive separately in the village for similar reasons: to find a pair of twins, Paul and John The newcomers meet and fall quickly in love, deciding to join forces to gain the trust of the brothers Paul and John are identical in almost every way — they drink the same brand of beer, they drive the same model of car (identical except for the license plate), wear the same clothes, read only the International Herald Tribune One is a fisherman; the other produces textiles John is affable; Paul is not No one has ever seen them together, not even their mutual friend Wicheria, the local bohemian ‘The two of them are playing one game, the same game,’ she explains to Andreas and Bernice The twins captivate the newcomers for professional reasons: Bernice wants to study them, Andreas to publish them   Are the brothers even two people? Why did they choose to live in this quietly remarkable way, at the end of the world? These are the centrifugal questions that propel The Solitary Twin As in all of Mathews’s novels, it can be difficult to parse red herrings from clues His books invite, perhaps demand, rereading in order to get a sense of what is what, to find out what clues were missed Mathews ironically quipped once that his ideal reader, upon finishing a book of his, would throw it out of the window only to chase it downstairs to retrieve it as it hit the ground As mysteries, his novels are