In Search of Klingsor: The International Bestselling Novel - Hardcover

Jorge Volpi; Kristina Cordero

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743201183 ISBN 13: 9780743201186

Publisher: Scribner, 2002

Synopsis

Assigned in 1946 to idenfity Hitler's top advisor on the atomic bomb, young physicist Francis Bacon encounters a survivor of the coup attempt against Hitler before entering into a complicated relationship with a mysterious woman. 40,000 first printing.

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Reviews

Broad in scope and supremely ambitious, this novel (the first in a projected trilogy) by Mexican writer Volpi succeeds at several levels as a thriller about a U.S. military officer seeking to ferret out the identity of the scientist who directed Nazi research during WWII, as a scientific search for truth by a physicist who encounters Einstein, Von Neumann, Schrodinger, Neils Bohr and other great minds of the 20th century and as a literary novel about a moral quest to destroy an evil that dates back to ancient German folklore. The framework for the novel is a scientific duel between Francis Bacon, the young American physicist who draws the assignment of trying to track down "Klingsor," the mysterious, diabolical head of Nazi research, and Gustav Links, a German physicist who worked on the Nazi atomic team and who agrees to help Bacon. Bacon balks at being assigned to Germany in the postwar years, but when he locates Links he embarks on a fascinating scientific journey that involves realistic and compelling meetings with the likes of Heisenberg, G"del and Schr"dinger. Heisenberg is the most promising suspect, but Bacon begins to doubt the physicist's guilt when he becomes involved with a German woman named Irene who begins to insist that Links is the culprit. Volpi's impeccable, extensive research provides the fuel for much of his taut prose, but he also mixes in plenty of poetic passages about the nature of physics, observation and discovery. The guessing game as to Klingsor's true identity provides considerable suspense, and Volpi adds resonance and moral weight by reaching back into German folklore. In an era in which science has become the primary vehicle for moving society forward, Volpi offers a poignant, powerful reminder of the potential and the peril involved when we harness the forces of nature.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Director of the Mexican Cultural Institute in Paris, Volpi relaxes by writing thrillers. Here, a young physicist who joins Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study in the late 1940s is trapped into undertaking a search for "Klingsor," once adviser to Hitler on the atomic bomb.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

In this elegantly written novel, Volpi explores the search for "Klingsor," the enigmatic German scientist who functioned as the Third Reich's chief advisor for their atomic bomb project. The setting is postwar Germany, where Allied forces are anxious to capture Klingsor before he can reveal his knowledge to extant members of the Third Reich. Leading the search is Francis Bacon, an American scientist whose tortured love affairs have pushed him from the confines of academia into the military. His story is entwined with Gustav Links', a brilliant scientist in his own right who also serves as the sly narrator of the novel. Links, recently freed from prison for his part in the plot to assassinate Hitler, is embroiled in a doomed love triangle of his own, and the two men soon find their parallel lives converging. Volpi, a much-heralded author in his native Mexico, here delivers a novel that manages to function as a crackling spy thriller while delivering a thoughtful treatise on the nature of love and deception. Brendan Dowling
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0743201183
• ISBN 13: 9780743201186
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 414