The MANIAC

Benjamín Labatut

$39.99

Hardback

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English

Pushkin Press
14 November 2023

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945); Artificial intelligence

From the author of When We Cease to Understand the World: a dazzling, kaleidoscopic book about the destructive chaos lurking in the history of computing and AIJohn von Neumann was an enigma. As a young man, he stunned those around him with his monomaniacal pursuit of the unshakeable foundations of mathematics. But when his faith in this all-encompassing system crumbled, he began to put his prodigious intellect to use for those in power. As he designed unfathomable computer systems and aided the development of the atomic bomb, his work pushed increasingly into areas that were beyond human comprehension and control - and that threatened human destruction.

In The MANIAC, Benjamin Labatut braids fact with fiction in a scintillating journey to the very fringes of rational thought, right to the point where it tips over into chaos. Stretching back to early twentieth-century conflict over contradictions in physics and up to advances in artificial intelligence that outpace the human, this is a mind-bending story of the mad dreams of reason.

By: Benjamín Labatut
Imprint: Pushkin Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 153mm,
ISBN: 9781782279815
ISBN 10: 1782279814
Pages: 368
Publication Date: 14 November 2023
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Benjamin Labatut was born in Rotterdam in 1980 and grew up in The Hague, Buenos Aires and Lima. When We Cease to Understand the World, his first book to be translated into English, was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. Labatut lives with his family in Santiago, Chile.

Reviews for The MANIAC

'Monstrously good... Reads like a dark foundation myth about modern technology but told with the pace of a thriller' - Mark Haddon 'Labatut's voice comes from the future, to free us from the curse of our present' - Wolfram Eilenberger, author of 'Time of the Magicians' 'Praise for' - When We Cease to Understand the World: 'A monstrous and brilliant book' - Philip Pullman 'Mesmerising and revelatory' - William Boyd