Ben Warner is dizzy with boredom, working for the summer in Cod Almighty, his local fish and chip shop, when one evening a sexy young woman called Lila arrives with a bizarre invitation. Ben is tempted, but suspicious - and with good reason. Lila wants him to visit her in the World of Ideas - a place he's never heard of - and, though Ben doesn't yet know it, Lila has been dead for thirty years (which at least explains the purple flares). Lila has a mission. Her boss, Socrates (President of the World of Ideas) has made a bet with his arch-rival Wittgenstein. To win the bet (and keep their jobs) he and Lila must prove to Ben that philosophy can change his life for the better. As Ben finds his way in to this dreamlike sector of the afterlife with its disconcerting worlds-within-worlds, he has no idea he's the subject of a bet. And so begins a mind-bending guided tour around the big, and the small, questions in life. Does time speed up when your heart beats faster? When is orange not orange? Do we have free will? Little by little, Ben starts to ask his own questions and to believe that - apart from football - the unexamined life is not really worth living.