The Maniac by Benjamín Labatut review – genius and madness in the shadow of the atomic bomb

The Chilean author’s assured fictionalised portrait of the visionary Hungarian scientist who contributed to the Manhattan Project and laid the foundations of modern computing is darkly intelligent and feverishly propulsive

Early on in this darkly fascinating novel based on real people and events, the Austrian physicist Paul Ehrenfest speaks of a “strange new rationality” that’s taking shape as the old certainties of classical physics crumble around him. He describes it as “a spectre haunting the soul of science… both logic-driven …

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