Overview

Mankind, scientists agree, is a tiny and insignificant anomaly in the impersonal vastness of the universe. But what would that universe be like if we were not here to say something about it? Without human beings there would be no words or language. Would there still be numbers, if there were no one to count them? Or scientific laws, if there were no words or numbers in which to express them? Would the universe even be vast, without the very fact of our tininess and insignificance to give it scale? The paradox is what Michael Frayn calls the 'the world's oldest mystery.' He shows how fleeting our contacts with the world around us are. The world is what we make of it. In which case, though, what are we? Conceptual questions of this nature have been the driving force behind many of Michael Frayn's novels and plays. In the book, with peerless wit and astonishing lucidity, he turns to confront them head-on.

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9780571232185

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Reviews

'Imaginative, funny and dazzlingly clever.' John Carey, Sunday Times

"""'Imaginative, funny and dazzlingly clever.' John Carey, Sunday Times"""

Author Information

Michael Frayn was born in London in 1933 and began his career as a journalist on the Guardian and the Observer. His novels include Towards the End of the Morning, The Trick of It, A Landing on the Sun and Spies. Headlong was shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize, Whitbread Novel Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. His thirteen plays range from Noises Off to Copenhagen, and he has translated a number of works, mostly from Russian. He is married to the biographer and critic Claire Tomalin.

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