Let me preempt my biases here: Theres a bit of patriotic pride in my review of this book, as Benjamn Labatut was already among the standout figures in contemporary Chilean Literature before When We Cease to Understand the World blew up, being published almost concurrently in English, German and French, being shortlisted for the International Booker Prize of 2021 and being praised by President Obama himself:
When We Cease to Understand the World joins the canon of books deemed unclassifiable, even though that label shouldve been disaggregated decades ago. In four chapters and an epilogue totaling somewhere around 200 pages, the book entangles together history, chronicle, essay, narrative fiction, and character studies into a working theory on the paradoxes of science, history, and a bit of neurodivergence.
The first chapter, Prussian Blue, introduces us to the books exploration of the interwoven relationship between scientific discovery and horror. Some of you might recognize it right away, how the chemical structure of that pigment is in the same family of cyanide and, eventually, the invention of Zyklon B, the gas used during the Holocaust. In a seamless wave, Labatut goes back and forth into the layers of past of modernity, from the use of methamphetamines in WWII to the origins of Prussian Blue and cyanide, completing the cycle with the figure of Fritz Haber, the brilliant chemist who helped discover the process to extract nitrate fertilizers, helped the German Empire chemical warfare efforts in World War I and, almost by accident, discovered the insecticide Zyklon, the same that would be used shortly after by the Nazis to exterminate most of his family. At the same time, Haber ushered in the fertilizer revolution that has fed billions of people over the last century, while also contributing to the two seminal horrors of the 20th Century.
Figures like Haber populate When We Cease, but Labatut crafts a sort of compassionate distancing that makes this book something more than an exploration of the dark side of science, as many blurbs have praised it to be. I dont think this book is about the darkness of science, or at least, not all the scientific discoveries depicted here are as terrible as Habers.
There is the chapter about how Karl Schwarzschild managed to solve Einsteins general relativity equations while serving and dying of an autoimmune disease in the frontlines of World War I. It is also a compact biopic of an obsessive but brilliant man who managed to complete the physics theory and introduce the very concept of a black hole in the singularity he proved. There are also the pure Mathematics theories developed by Shinichi Mochizuki and his predecessor, Alexander Grothendieck, probably one of the greatest and most revolutionary mathematicians of the past century, both of whom were driven to mental breakdowns by developing a new field of mathematics or trying to unearth the heart of the heart of maths. Finally, there is a longer novella about how Werner Heisenberg, Louis De Broglie and Erwin Schrdinger, all discovering parts of the paradoxical universe of the elementary particles, all while spiraling in and out of physical and psychological ailments. Discoveries whose theses would be syncretized in the famous Fifth Solvay Conference of 1927 (Quantumania!), that helped lay the foundations of Quantum Theory (and where the header picture was taken), under the baffled guidance of an Albert Einstein that sees how even the paradigm-shift he brought about wasnt enough to explain the universe.
In each of these stories, Labatut does show us the dark places these actual, unquestionable geniuses have to go through in order to prove conclusions, conclusions that appear to us in brains wired to turn patterns into narratives, as breakthroughs, lights at the end of tunnels. Instead, Labatut uses psychological turmoil and tension as a clever red herring, as he draws a thesis that frustrates any triumph: All these geniuses put their sanity on the line just to discover how inexplicable the foundations of the world can be, while using the very evidence-based methodology that systematically proves and falsifies a theory. At the same time, this book doesnt turn the aforementioned into yet another simplistic warning on the dangers of science.
And thats where Literature comes in. This book is cleverly and devilishly structured, as Philip Pullman described it, as both a wave and a particle. A quantum field of theses, improving on Javier Cercas notion of the blind-spot novel, about how the best literature is structured around an open-ended question. Instead, the stories in When We Cease can collapse into that first thesis when read one way, but this is also a literary character study. Labatuts creative license is supported by tracing the places and experiences the characters actually had, all of which share the 20th century as a trauma, in particular the European Jewish experience, but also the trenches of World War I, the collapse of the German and Austrian Empires and the ancient regime and as it becomes evident in their traits neurodivergence before it had a name and way before we began understanding it as more than a handicap. All these stories seem to show a correlation between scientific progress and a trail of broken men. But that theory is also falsifiable; there can be scientific progress without a trail of disaster.
There is a concerted effort to make these figures something more than the last of the solitary-genius scientist types, as Labatut imbues with Literature their dives into the ultimate abstraction. There is this clich about how language falls short when talking about certain things, like the Holocaust or Quantum theory. Except it doesnt, more so with abstract sciences. This book proves that Literature can and should sing about Science because it has the resources to explain a phenomenon in ways Science cannot, without ever forgetting that Science does have the proof. Maybe thats just me, a pro-Science fanatic that will always place the Natural Sciences above my own discipline. But Literature can be another language to understand the world, or at least the quantum results in which we collapsed a phenomenon. That, I think, its the other way this book can be measured.
Labatuts prose is impeccable, fast-paced, easy to follow by just about everyone. This is also what makes it surprisingly adaptable to screen. It would work amazingly in a mixture of non-fiction and narrative like Raoul Pecks Exterminate All the Brutes.
When We Cease to Understand the World was translated into English by Adrian Nathan West, published by Pushkin Press in the U.K., and by New York Review Books in the USA.This is also the first book Alberto Cox has read in 8 months, make of that what you will
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