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When We Cease to Understand the World

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When We Cease to Understand the World

Written by: Benjamín Labatut
Narrated by: Adam Barr
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About this listen

Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize.

A Guardian Fiction Book of the year.

Sometimes discovery brings destruction.

When We Cease to Understand the World shows us great minds striking out into dangerous, uncharted terrain.

Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger: these are among the luminaries into whose troubled minds we are thrust as they grapple with the most profound questions of existence. They have strokes of unparalleled genius, they alienate friends and lovers, they descend into isolated states of madness. Some of their discoveries revolutionise our world for the better; others pave the way to chaos and unimaginable suffering. The lines are never clear.

With breakneck pace and wondrous detail, Benjamín Labatut uses the imaginative resources of fiction to break open the stories of scientists and mathematicians who expanded our notions of the possible.

©2020 Benjamín Labatut (P)2021 Pushkin Press Biographical Fiction Contemporary Fiction Genre Fiction Psychological

Critic Reviews

A monstrous and brilliant book.
-- Philip Pullman

Wholly mesmerising and revelatory... Completely fascinating.
-- William Boyd
All stars
Most relevant
One can decide after reading, how much is fiction in this book about lives of the great scientists of 20the century. The author has fantasized them like a myth. The reader may enjoy reading it once.

Unbelievable

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it's a beautifully crafted weave of fact and fiction, bringing to life long known facts as stories that stay with you, transforming names that we have only known as scientific stalwards into flawed whole people whose compulsions and strive make them that much more remarkable.

a beautiful weave of fact and fiction

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I began listening to this book just to while away some time but got completely bewitched from the first para of Prussian Blue...what a book it is, just WOW!

Great work, one of it's kind

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