When We Cease to Understand the World (2021) by Benjamin Labatut

Book Review

When We Cease to Understand the World (2021)

by Benjamin Labatut

   Chilean author Benjamin Labatut scored a rare triple for this blog.  His novel, When We Ceast to Understand the World was published by the New York Review of Books and nominated for the shortlist (and potentially the winner) of both the International Booker and the translated fiction National Book Award.  When We Cease to Understand the World is a novel about advanced physics and mathematics, and the quirky lives of those actual pioneers.  Personally I think there is a strong argument to be advanced that physics is *the* primary scientific metaphor of the 21st century, in the same way that biology/evolution dominated the 19th century and electricity dominated the 20th.   Unfortunately, unlike biology and electricity, advance physics makes, at a very basic, level, no fucking sense.

     It was a genie that Albert Einstein let out of the bottle and then spent the rest of his life trying to capture: The idea that there was no solid reality and that matter is just a collection of empty space and tiny, unpredictable particles forming waves of energy. What is so amazing about these pioneers of advanced physics is that they conjured this stuff up in their head- there are few if any actual experiments in the early history of advanced physics, and then decades later the entire world spent billions and billions of dollars to build enormous particle accelerators which then proved that these early pioneers were right on the money.

     Any work of fiction that seeks to tackle some of these ineffable mysteries is a worthy effort, and I think Labatut handles these subjects better than most- and in a spare 190 pages.  This is the kind of book that wins international literary awards.