When We Cease to Understand the World..., Benjamin Labatut
When We Cease to Understand the World..., Benjamin Labatut
1 Rating(s)
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When We Cease to Understand the World

Author: Benjamin Labatut, Adrian Nathan West

Narrator: Adam Barr

Unabridged: 5 hr 40 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/30/2021

Synopsis

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 Schrödinger—these are some of the luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut thrusts the listener, 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.

About Benjamin Labatut

Benjamín Labatut was born in Rotterdam in 1980 and grew up in The Hague, Buenos Aires, and Lima. He published two award-winning works of fiction prior to When We Cease to Understand the World, which is his first book to be translated into English. He lives with his family in Santiago, Chile.

About Adrian Nathan West

Adrian Nathan West is a novelist, essayist, and translator living in Spain. His criticism has appeared in the London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and many other publications. He has translated books from German, Catalan, and Spanish, including Jean Améry’s Charles Bovary, Country Doctor (NYRB Classics), and Pere Gimferrer (NYRB Poets).

About Adam Barr

Adam Barr is a recovering lawyer, a twenty-five-year veteran of the golf industry, and an actor and a singer with a lifelong love of books and reading. An English major in college, he continued his education by studying with audiobook and voiceover veterans such as Johnny Heller, Steven Jay Cohen, and Tom Dheere. He currently resides with his wife and their Goldendoodle in New York City.

Reviews

Goodreads review by David on April 29, 2023

This is a fantastic mashup of form and genre from Benjamin Labatut and translator Adrian Nathan West. Labatut weaves a story that is part short-fiction(s), part essay to explore the psychological impact of scientific advances, focusing on developments in the 20th century that led to widespread chang......more

Goodreads review by Lark on November 05, 2022

There are a lot of authors experimenting just now with ways to combine the real, and the fictional, and the historical, and the personal all together into a narrative. What I've vividly discovered for myself, now that I've read When We Cease to Understand the World, is how much I adore those authors......more

Goodreads review by Ilenia on February 20, 2021

Commistione riuscitissima tra invenzione e saggistica, la storia della scienza moderna - tra le meraviglie della scoperta e gli abissi spalancati dalla mancanza di senso - attraverso aneddoti biografici dei suoi protagonisti. Tutti ossessionati, geniali e furiosi. Forse l’unica pecca è che, malgrado......more

Goodreads review by Oni on December 27, 2021

I take books very personally. Even more so, books that weave all of my passions and interests together: literary modern fiction, science, ethics and science history. Unfortunately, “When We Cease to Understand the World” left me feeling offended and cheated. The book is ambitious, clearly researched......more

Goodreads review by Katia on May 02, 2021

This book has reminded me of a sandwich, the moment when you cut your teeth into a very attractive piece of gourmand bread enjoying the flavour, but suddenly it is mixed with a taste of the filling. And this filling is somewhat iffy. Possibly, it contains too much spice or just lacking the sophistic......more

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