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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 Genre Fiction Psychological Fiction

What the critics say

A monstrous and brilliant book.
-- Philip Pullman

Wholly mesmerising and revelatory... Completely fascinating.
-- William Boyd

What listeners say about When We Cease to Understand the World

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Manages to be both disturbing and pointless

Even though I bought it, I couldn't get past the first chapter. A first for me.

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