The International Booker-shortlisted author of When We Cease to Understand the World deftly intertwines fact and fiction in this captivating reimagining of the life of the Hungarian-American polymath.
From the author of When We Cease to Understand the World: a dazzling, kaleidoscopic book about the destructive chaos lurking in the history of computing and AI Johnny von Neumann was an enigma.
As a young man, he stunned those around him with his monomaniacal pursuit of the unshakeable foundations of mathematics. But when his faith in this all-encompassing system crumbled, he began to put his prodigious intellect to use for those in power.
As he designed unfathomable computer systems and aided the development of the atomic bomb, his work pushed increasingly into areas that were beyond human comprehension and control - and that threatened human destruction.
In The MANIAC, Benjamin Labatut braids fact with fiction in a scintillating journey to the very fringes of rational thought, right to the point where it tips over into chaos.
Stretching back to early twentieth-century conflict over contradictions in physics and up to advances in artificial intelligence that outpace the human, this is a mind-bending story of the mad dreams of reason.
Publisher: Pushkin Press
ISBN: 9781782279815
Number of pages: 368
Dimensions: 234 x 153 mm
Brilliantly cerebral... magnificent - Sunday Telegraph (five stars)
[Labatut] is fast emerging as the most significant South American writer since Borges... There is no one writing like him anywhere in the world - Telegraph
Absorbing... The MANIAC reads like physicist Carlo Rovelli crossed with the cosmic horror of HP Lovecraft - Chris Power, Sunday Times
Imaginatively told through the fictionalised personal testimony of von Neumann's friends and family, the novel is as engrossing as it is disturbing' - Financial Times, Books of the Year
Intoxicating... this marvel of a book, which inspires awe and dread in equal measure, is stalked by the greatest terrors of the 20th century, yet its final heart-stopping sentence makes clear the greatest terrors are yet to come - Daily Mail
Darkly intelligent and feverishly propulsive - Observer
Talent, ambition, skill, intelligence - [are] present in abundance - Guardian, Book of the Day
Virtuosic... Labatut is that vanishingly uncommon thing: a contemporary writer of thrilling originality... The MANIAC is a work of dark, eerie and singular beauty - Washington Post
A brooding, heady narrative that is addictively interesting... gripping, provocative - Wall Street Journal
A dark, strange novel by a rising literary star - New Scientist
Captivating - Irish Times
Monstrously good... Reads like a dark foundation myth about modern technology but told with the pace of a thriller - Mark Haddon
In fictionalising the history of the atomic bomb, Labatut has landed on a chilling way to dramatise our contemporary fears. Science Fiction-tinged nightmares about new nuclear threats and an alien, self-learning system of intelligence are made both more real and understandable through the voices of the people who gave birth to them - Literary Review
Thrilling - and chilling... A gripping read - Marie Claire, Best Books of 2023
A necessary book, a harrowing one, and it will change the way you look at the world around you - LitHub
As addictive as a true crime tale - Mail on Sunday
Both entertains and provokes... His infernal vision of science captures something of the unsettling vertigo of living right here in the Anthropocene after all - TLS
Labatut's voice comes from the future, to free us from the curse of our present - Wolfram Eilenberger, author of 'Time of the Magicians'
The MANIAC works as a novel primarily due to Benjamin Labatut's mastery of prose - Irish Business Post
Labatut is very good on making science exciting... less through their technical details than by expressing the human experience of ignorance being swept away, with wonder put in its place - The Critic
If you've yet to sample Labatut, stop wasting time. Get on the Labatut train - BookMunch
Erudite, entertaining and important - Morning Star
Benjamin Labatut's first novel written in English is a fictionalised biography of John von Neumann - the Hungarian emigre polymath who devised the architecture underpinning all modern computing, invented the... More
When We Cease to Understand the World instantly became one of my all time favourite books in 2020 and I have been impatiently awaiting this next installment ever since. The MANIAC very lightly fictionalises advances... More
For two days after reading just the opening paragraph, this novel lived in my mind.
This is the kind of book I love; when I'm not reading it, I'm still thinking about reading it. And when I am reading it, I...
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