Einstein's Monsters

Nov 15, 2024 7:40 AM

Author:Martin Amis

Einstein's Monsters

An ex-circus strongman, veteran of Warsaw, 1939, and Notting Hill rough-justice artist, meets his own personal holocaust and 'Einsteinian' destiny; maximum boredom and minimum love-making are advised in a 2020 epidemic; a virulent new strain of schizophrenia overwhelms the young son of a 'father of the nuclear age'; evolution takes a rebarbative turn in a Kafkaesque love story; and the history of the earth is frankly discussed by one who has witnessed it all.

The stories in this collection form a unity and reveal a deep preoccupation: '"Einstein's Monsters" refers to nuclear weapons but also to ourselves,' writes Amis in his enlightening introductory essay, 'We are Einstein's monsters: not fully human, not for now.'

Reviews

A phenomenal writer. He has style as quick and efficient as a flick-knife, and a gift for the grotesque that makes other people's nightmares look like Victorian watercolours

—— Sunday Times

Amis is first-rate; arguing inventing, demonstrating, parodying, being funny and shocking in the same breath

—— Observer

Amis's introduction to these five stories is a beautifully judged piece of polemic; a carefully reasoned emotionally charged attack on the unthinkable folly of nuclear war - an elegant, funny, moving book

—— Daily Telegraph

A deeply impressive collection of short stories

—— Sunday Telegraph

Funny, softhearted and hopeful

—— Los Angeles Times

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