Labatut takes real scientists — Schwarzschild, Heisenberg, Schrödinger — and follows them to the edge of what they discovered, and what it cost them. The line between fact and fiction is deliberately blurred. It reads like a thriller about the nature of reality, which is more or less what it is.
Adrian Nathan West’s translation is precise and unsettling in exactly the right ways. This is a short book that leaves a long shadow. I’ve pressed it on everyone who will take it, and not one of them has come back disappointed.
Year 2020
Price £10.99
Category Literary Fiction