SOLVED. Adult Non-fiction. Intellectuals from different fields receive the same cryptic, mysterious book wrapped in newspaper by post/mail. Read around 2010. Spoiler ahead. [s]

[Fiora]

I read this book around 10 years ago (2010ish). The narrator receives mysterious post of a kind of hand bound cryptic book wrapped in newspaper. He then discovers that other people have received the same book. I think they are all intellectuals from all different fields?? So they feel like they’ve been presented with a mystery to solve. I think the conclusion is that the book is in fact nonsense and there is no mystery.
For some reason I have it in my head that it is magical realism, but I might be mixing it up. My mum remembers it too and says it is definitely a book and not a short story.

Thanks in advance!

[Fiora]

Update: asked a friend and they recognised it. They said that he eventually tracks down the creator of the mystery book and goes to his house.

[Kris]

Something by Jorge Luis Borges perhaps?

[Fiora]

Thanks Kris, I thought that too but I looked up all of the plots of Labyrinths and Fictions and couldn’t find it.

My mum has just said to me that she thinks this story might actually be the prologue to a larger book.

[Jon]

It's not fiction, but doesn't this happen at the start of Jon Ronson's The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry?

Academics around the world all receive an odd book in the mail.

[Fiora]

It is!! Thank you, Jon.

How funny, just as I read this post my mum called me to say she had remembered.

So not magical realism at all, but I suppose as close to it as it gets in the real world!

[Jon]

Yeah, as soon as I read your description I knew I'd read it too, and I started thinking about fiction I'd read recently before I remembered. I also remembered thinking at the time it would be a great set-up for a mystery novel.

[Fiora]

Good detective work :D

[Kris]

Nice find. Real life is stranger than fiction.