When We Cease to Understand the World

One of The New York Times Book Review‘s 10 Best Books of 2021

Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize and the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature

A fictional examination of the lives of real-life scientists and thinkers whose discoveries resulted in moral consequences beyond their imagining.

When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction.

Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schringer–these are some of luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjam匤 Labatut thrusts the reader, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence. They have strokes of unparalleled genius, alienate friends and lovers, descend into isolation and insanity. Some of their discoveries reshape human life for the better; others pave the way to chaos and unimaginable suffering. The lines are never clear.

At a breakneck pace and with a wealth of disturbing detail, Labatut uses the imaginative resources of fiction to tell the stories of the scientists and mathematicians who expanded our notions of the possible.

Author: Benjamin Labatut
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Published: 09/28/2021
Pages: 192
Weight: 0.6lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.70w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9781681375663
Language: English