The MANIAC

By: Benjamin Labatut

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Paperback | 1 September 2023

At a Glance

Paperback
368 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
15.3 x 23.2 x 2.9

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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 AIJohnny 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.

'Emerging as the most significant South American writer since Borges... there is no one writing like him anywhere in the world' - Telegraph

Industry Reviews

'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

'If you've yet to sample Labatut, stop wasting time. Get on the Labatut train.' - BookMunch

'Talent, ambition, skill, intelligence - [are] present in abundance.' - Guardian, Book of the Day

'Captivating' - Irish Times

'Thrilling - and chilling [...] A gripping read.' - Marie Claire, Best Books of 2023

'A dark, strange novel by a rising literary star' - New Scientist

'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

'As addictive as a true crime tale' - Mail on Sunday

'Absorbing... perfect for anyone thirsting for more nuclear anxiety after watching Oppenheimer... reads like the physicist Carlo Rovelli crossed with the cosmic horror of HP Lovecraft' - Chris Power, Sunday Times

'Both entertains and provokes... [Labatut's] infernal vision of science captures something of the unsettling vertigo of living right here in the Anthropocene after all' - TLS

'Emerging as the most significant South American writer since Borges... there is no one writing like him anywhere in the world' - Interview in the Telegraph

'Brilliantly cerebral'- 5* Sunday Telegraph
'Praise for' - When We Cease to Understand the World:

'A monstrous and brilliant book' - Philip Pullman

'Mesmerising and revelatory' - William Boyd

'Ingenious, intricate and deeply disturbing' - John Banville

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