DBF21 Presents: When We Cease to Understand the World

Benjamín Labatut in conversation with Rick O’Shea In partnership with the Embassy of Chile in Ireland Sometimes the greatest discoveries bring the greatest destruction Join Dublin Book Festival for an evening with Chilean author Benjamín Labatut as he discusses his novel, which was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2021, with broadcaster and national literary connoisseur Rick O’Shea. Described by Philip Pullman as ‘a monstrous and brilliant book’, When We Cease to Understand the World is a fascinating and revelatory insight into how the world’s greatest minds can wreak the greatest havoc. Thrusting us into the troubled lives of such scientific luminaries as Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger, this book explores the sometimes blurred lines between genius and madness; how some of science’s greatest discoveries revolutionise our world for the better, while others pave the way to chaos and unimaginable suffering. Merging fact and fiction to great effect, Labatut shines a bright and powerful light on some of the most brilliant minds in this history of science and mathematics.