One can certainly talk about books as a literary scholar without ever having read one. With such provocative theses, Franco Moretti has been shaking up international literary theory for years. In his new book, Moretti, who has already been compared to Umberto Eco for his innovative flair, demonstrates what an "abstract literary science" might look like: Instead of engaging with individual canonical texts, he maps the landscape of English village stories or tests the applicability of evolutionary theoretical concepts to the development of the detective novel.