When We Cease to Understand the World

Name: When We Cease to Understand the World
Author: Benjamín Labatut

Benjamín Labatut · 2020

Schwarzschild calculates black holes in the trenches. Heisenberg discovers uncertainty. Mathematicians and physicists push knowledge to the edge of madness. Labatut, in his 2020 debut, blurs fiction and history into something terrifying and genuinely new.

The case against

on the supposed geniuses
“The absence of historical context makes these supposed geniuses seem like dullards.”
Adam Mars-Jones · London Review of Books, 2022
on Heisenberg’s matrices
“The accountants I know would run away screaming if presented with a Heisenberg matrix.”
three stars · a book blog
on the style
“In structure and content, the novel is highly mannered”
Kirkus Reviews, 2021
on the turn to fiction
“when he begins the slide down the slippery slope to fiction the missteps”
M.A. Orthofer · the complete review, 2021