Whilst at Princeton he became great friends with another extraordinary scientist, Albert Einstein, who loved nothing more than to walk with Gödel and discuss ideas and discoveries with him. He escaped the horrors of Europe in 1939 by coming to teach at Princeton. Gödel (1906-1978) was one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century. I loved the creative flow and the originality as well as the frequent bon mots: “An exile is a refugee with a library,” or “embarrassment is the paramount emotion of the English.” Very true! But it is his theme of limitations that takes him to the most important central idea of the book, which is inspired by the work of the Austro-Hungarian mathematician Kurt Gödel. His writing is powerful and passionate and the full scope of his ideas takes us on a great journey of discovery. Rahman’s book is a mighty tome extending to nearly 500 pages, and dealing with loss and rediscovery and the limits of our experience and understanding of love, relationships, science and war. (My absolute favorite debut novel of the past 20 years is Rasero by the Mexican writer Francisco Rebolledo but that’s for another blog.) I adore first novels as they are often an expression of a vast reservoir of ideas, experience, thought, and discoveries which then explode onto the page ready for us to marvel at and consume. One of my great discoveries this past summer was a debut novel by a young writer from Bangladesh, Zia Haider Rahman, called In The Light of What We Know.
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