“When we cease to understand the world.” – a beautifully conceived literary tour-de-force by Benjamin Labatut.

A few months ago, The New York Times released a list of the top 100 books published in the first twenty-five years of this century—that is, from January 1, 2000, till date. They reached out to literary luminaries—503 of them, to be precise—in the fields of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and criticism and asked them to put down their top 10 books for the period. From the lists they received, the editorial staff at The New York Times curated the top 100 books. Now, I don’t have to emphasize that any such list is bound to be incomplete and, at best, reflect the preferences and tastes of the esteemed voters, however accomplished they may be. However, there is merit in reviewing such lists. The chief merits are that it brings to one’s attention books on subjects that interest you and that you may have missed and would like to get your hands on soon, followed (inevitably) by silent moments of self-adulation and pride in discovering that the books you have read of your own volition are also featured on this elite list. Readers love that tingle of discovery and recognition (When you have independently read a book that Margaret Atwood has also read and rated highly, you are allowed to feel good about yourself. No harm!).

Listed as “83” in the top 100 books, this title caught my attention: When We Cease to Understand the World by the Chilean author Benjamin Labatut. I knew I had come across this title earlier somewhere, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. After a few minutes, it struck me that this book was also part of President Obama’s 2021 Summer reading list—a list I follow regularly. The short description of the book in the New York Times compilation stated that this book was about the scientists who discovered the world of quantum mechanics in the early 20th century, which upended the solid deterministic laws that had held sway since Newton. The citation also mentioned that the book was a work of fiction. That intrigued me. How can a book based on scientific discovery also be a work of fiction? I ordered the book on Amazon.

I like to know more about the author I read. While waiting for the book, I did some digging into Benjamin Labatut. I checked YouTube to see if there were interviews. And sure, there were—quite a few of them from the year when Cease to Understand was released. My first impression of Benjamin Labatut was how young and handsome he looked. He was dressed in casual black tees and jeans, with tattoos showing off on his muscled arms. Thick and dark wavy hair—strands of which constantly fell across his face, and he kept pushing them behind his ears; a well-chiseled face and penetrating eyes. And he spoke impeccable English with a Dutch accent. His responses to questions were well thought out. He never looked hurried and seemed in complete possession of himself. When he answered a question, his eyes took on a faraway look that comes when a man has been through enough and has found his anchor and perspective. Across many interviews, Benjamin spoke about his work in very mystical terms. He considered his work deeply rooted in fiction, which he believed is a medium to showcase contradictions in life, and that he was deeply attracted to subjects, especially science, where, at the deepest level, the reality is strange, disconcerting, and maddening.

Benjamin was born in the Netherlands, lived there till he was two, went back to Chile, stayed there until he was eight, and then again moved back to the Netherlands to spend his teens before returning to Chile. So, quite an itinerant life. And from what I read about him, he seemed a recluse who preferred to let his work speak for itself. His first two books were written in Spanish, and they are not currently available in English. When I tried to find out more about them, I couldn’t, except for the fact that both the books were explorations into the human psyche and the mystery of madness. It was his third book When We Cease to Understand the World, beautifully translated into English by Adrian Nathan West, that brought him into the sphere of the broader reading public. The book was shortlisted for the National Book Award and won numerous other acclaims (including finding its way into Obama’s reading list). His latest book, released in 2024, is called The Maniac, a fictional narrative laced with facts about one of the enigmatic geniuses of the 20th century, John von Neumann. Benjamin wrote The Maniac in English. I found it extraordinary that he could write in two languages with equal felicity. I checked for The Maniac on Amazon; it was available. I ordered it immediately. I have never done that before. I was buying two books by an author who I hadn’t read before and whose name I had recently been acquainted with. Something attracted me to this author, and I waited with trembling eagerness for the books to arrive.

When We Cease is a short book. I was surprised that it was just 200 pages long and printed in a reasonably big font, which made the work look shorter than it would have otherwise been. I started reading the book on a Saturday morning with my dose of coffee beside me. The very first few pages made me sit up straight. Something was happening in the narrative that was so different and beguiling. Labatut starts with the suicide of General Hermann Göring, Hitler’s right hand, from a capsule of cyanide hidden in a jar in his cell, and from there branches into the discovery of the beautiful hue ultramarine that painters used so prolifically in the 18th century, and from there to the invention of making nitrogen from air to the discovery of lethal gases that killed thousands in the First World War. Labatut’s mind connects the dots with remarkable depth and frictionless ease, each fact clothed in fiction, creating a kaleidoscope of images and sensations in the reader.

In the chapters that follow this haunting introduction, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Dirac, Niels Bohr, Einstein, and other stalwarts of the quantum revolution fill the pages. The descriptions get increasingly intense, and the process of scientific discoveries is revealed through prose and conversations that blur the line between the state of madness and the reach of genius. Labatut aims to present the quantum world as a troubling truth—a truth that undermines everything that we take for granted. No one who dares to come face to face with its reality, as these geniuses did, can ever remain the same. It is as if the ground had given way, and all that remained was free fall into a dark void that cannot be fathomed or measured. At best, only acknowledgment is possible. A feverish personality takes over, and the difficulty in conveying and proving those truths becomes almost Promethean in scale and endeavor. Equations don’t match; waves and particles collide. Centuries of truths crumble, and in their place, nothing solid is erected.

In Labatut’s heroic imagination, all these personalities and events come alive like never before in literary history. There are dozens of non-fiction books that trace the history and background of quantum mechanics. Still, none of them, I am sure, captures the terrible beauty and descent into uncertainty that these truths reveal, as Labatut’s book does. It is only fiction that can capture the vortex of emotions that drive the search for truth.

I finished the book in one sitting, dazed and drawn into the fascinating world Labatut had created. Very few books in my life have left me with this kind of raw emotional resonance. Hypnotic images of a delirious Heisenberg struggling with his equations in Helgoland, of Schrödinger wetting his bed trying to decipher the waving property of the quantum world, or Louis de Broglie, born a prince, teetering at the edge of madness and living like a pauper in his palatial home attempting to validate Schrödinger’s position—and more such haunting images—swirled through my brain. There were portions of the book that I hadn’t read deeply enough because of the pace and flow of Labatut’s prose, so in the evening, after returning from a swim, I started rereading the book. I was irresistibly drawn to it. This time around, more was revealed. Nuances I had missed the first time around emerged from the text.

I then understood that look on Labatut’s face during his interviews—that ferocious sense of having reached the edge of darkness and reclaimed a truth that cannot be gotten through easier means.

Never before have I read the same book twice in a single day. And I am sure I will read it again and again and again as time passes. To me, When We Cease belongs to that rare category of books that change one’s outlook on a subject. Fiction it sure is, but in the way it is written, it undergirds, intensifies, and reveals the terrible nature of reality as revealed in the sciences and the effect it could have had on people who discovered this disconcerting reality. Niels Bohr once said that anyone who is not shocked by the nature of the quantum world hasn’t understood it. That is so true, and Labatut brings that shock to the reader with remarkable prose and power. To say that the quantum world is neither a particle nor a wave and that we cannot know either one of these assertions for sure can be dismissed as a bland technical fact. Or we can pause, take a step back, and contemplate the enormity of this statement. It should take one’s breath away because nothing else would do. Einstein failed to acknowledge this truth till his last breath. He continued to insist that God does not play dice with the world. But even as he kept insisting that one day, a new dimension would be revealed that would reconcile Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle with his solid convictions about reality, more and more measurements have only validated what Heisenberg and Bohr had unequivocally stated—that, at some point, at the quantum level, you cease to understand the world, and there is nothing we can do about it.

I finished Labatut’s Maniac soon after I had finished this book. Extraordinary again, but that is a different tale, equally immersive and illuminating, telescoping into the life and times of the man—John von Neumann—whose inventions and discoveries are the foundation of today’s AI.

I don’t have to recommend When We Cease to Understand the World. My entire essay is a recommendation, as my readers would have noticed. Even if you don’t appreciate the science behind the book, you will close the covers with a feeling that you have encountered a brilliant writer, an iconoclastic thinker, and a literary sensation like no one you have known before. Labatut’s work is not merely a book—it is an experience, a plunge into the depths of human understanding and the mysteries that elude it – a blend of genius and madness, of scientific rigor and poetic chaos, and where the boundaries between fiction and reality dissolve into something far more profound.

This is not a book you read; it is a book you inhabit. Labatut is one of the great literary explorers of our time, and I cannot wait to see where his pen leads us next.