The novel has been translated into Danish, Dutch, English (British and American), French, German, Greek, Korean, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Basque, Czech, Portuguese, Spanish and Serbian.

The book spans 30 years as he is pursued by 'Q' (short for "Qoèlet"), a spy for the Roman Catholic Church cardinal Giovanni Pietro Carafa.

As in the 16th century, the Counter-Reformation repressed any alternative theological current or radical social movement, and the Peace of Augsburg sanctioned the partition of the continent among Catholic and Protestant powers, so the last twenty years of the 20th century were marked by a vengeful rebirth of conservative ideologies, and the International Monetary Fund-driven corporate globalization of the economy seemed to rout any resistance.

[citation needed] According to other readers and critics,[2] Q is a thinly disguised autobiography of Luther Blissett as a subversive, identity-shifting collective phantom.

The protagonist has no name (the authors later renamed themselves Wu Ming, which is Chinese for "no name"), is involved in every tumult of the age, incites the people to rebellion, and organizes hoaxes, swindles and mischievous acts.

[4] Other readers have suggested that Q — apart from radicalism, post-modernism, and allegories — is above all an adventure novel, a swashbuckler in the very Italian tradition of Emilio Salgari and other popular feuilleton authors.

"[11]On January 21, 2011, the Italian producer Domenico Procacci optioned Q to make a movie and commissioned the screenplay for the film to Giaime Alonge and Alessandro Scippa.

[13] Later on, they revealed that the title would be Altai and explained: We felt the urge to go back to the “crime scene” (our 1999 debut) after the collective lost a member, in the springtime of 2008.