In Search of Klingsor : The International Bestselling Novel

Rating:
Summary: Quantum Who Dunnit
Review: A fairly well written work on a young physicist's search for the enigmatic Klingsor, an alleged physicist in Nazi Germany who worked on the atomic project (a plutonic Parsifal perhaps). The 'romantic' sub-plots got to be rather mechanistic, tedious after awhile but the plot driven premise will keep you reading. I just let my eyes go out of focus during the so called love scenes and then re-focused them when I'd come across names such as Heisenberg, Pauli, et. al. and this seemed to help somewhat seeing that I have a fetish for indeterminacy above all other things.(...)

Rating:
Summary: Quantum Who Dunnit
Review: A fairly well written work on a young physicist's search for the enigmatic Klingsor, an alleged physicist in Nazi Germany who worked on the atomic project (a plutonic Parsifal perhaps). The 'romantic' sub-plots got to be rather mechanistic, tedious after awhile but the plot driven premise will keep you reading. I just let my eyes go out of focus during the so called love scenes and then re-focused them when I'd come across names such as Heisenberg, Pauli, et. al. and this seemed to help somewhat seeing that I have a fetish for indeterminacy above all other things.(...)

Rating:
Summary: Hmmmm.........
Review: I'm not too sure about this book. It certainly lacks any real subtlety, and many of its points are laboured. Too often I winced at the way Volpi's thoughts are hammered across. It could be the English translation though, I suppose. The inelegance of this book really frustrated me.... maybe I've been reading too much Hemingway again...

Rating:
Summary: Hmmmm.........
Review: I'm not too sure about this book. It certainly lacks any real subtlety, and many of its points are laboured. Too often I winced at the way Volpi's thoughts are hammered across. It could be the English translation though, I suppose. The inelegance of this book really frustrated me.... maybe I've been reading too much Hemingway again...

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, intriguing, and unique.
Review: Some of the great Nobel Prize winners of the early 20th century--Erwin Schrodinger, Werner Heisenberg, Max Planck, Johannes Stark, and Nils Bohr--play roles in this fascinating novel about the effort to unmask Klingsor, codename for the prominent scientist believed to have overseen and approved Nazi Germany's research into an atomic weapon. Gustav Links, a German physicist, is co-operating with Francis Bacon, a young scientist and OSS officer, just after the Nuremberg Trials, as he tries to identify Klingsor.

The novel, supposedly Links's journal about the search, is both intelligent and unusual. Links applies scientific laws and their corollaries to the art of fiction, suggests scientific hypotheses which might be applicable to espionage, and reveals "autobiographical disquisitions: from set theory to totalitarianism," along with discussions of parallel universes, game theory, and even the quest for the Holy Grail as described in Wagner's Parsifal. The scientific discoveries of Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Planck, et. al., are presented clearly, so that even someone like me, who is neither a mathematician nor a scientist, can understand enough of the material to make the book and the search for Klingsor both tension-filled and exciting. Two love stories--that of Links in the mid-1930's and of Bacon in 1946--provide breaks from the sometimes textbook-like disquisitions on physics.

Volpi's language is rich in metaphor and often playful--an electron is described as a criminal who commits atrocities and slips away, and quantum mechanics as a police chief who wants to nab him during that "one brief instant, when someone is able to make out his silhouette." And this simile may be unique: "He had behaved like a subatomic particle, subjecting himself to the imperious forces of bodies far more powerful than he."

Despite its cleverness, however, the book has some clumsy plotting and some dead-giveaway moments, which marred the narrative for me. Links often sets up meetings with German scientists and then meets with Bacon to talk about the scientist's "file," an artificial device which gives information to the reader but acts as a brake on the narrative. At one point, Volpi even introduces a new character, who, at just the right moment, and "by pure coincidence...is transcribing Nazi party archives that were used during the Nuremberg Trials," a report which is then analyzed, another narrative-slowing episode.

Cliches are sometimes a problem. One of the female characters, who, incidentally, will meet her lover only at night, says, "If you really love me, you have to promise me...that you'll always trust me," then asks about the search for Klingsor and the scientists her lover has interviewed. Amazingly, the "intelligent" lover never gets suspicious, even when warned about her "Slavic accent," and tells her everything, even bringing her into his interviews with Schrodinger and Bohr. The unmasking of a "new" Klingsor in the conclusion does not surprise, nor does the identity. This is a very unusual and intriguing novel, however, incorporating fact, fiction, science, and philosophy in new ways, and readers interested in science and math may be so intrigued they'll willingly excuse any narrative lapses. Mary Whipple

Rating:
Summary: In Search of Truth
Review: The key statement of this book, and the key discovery made by its main character, is that we will never truly know what really happened in the Second World War and its aftermath, when the United States, victorious against one enemy, suddenly had to start fighting another. History is a plastic, porous thing that defies the sort of objective study that the protagonist brings to the story.

This novel was a fantastic read, thoroughly engrossing and filled with fascinating detail, though I must admit that I am not historian enough to speak to its veracity. It would seem to present a vivid and believable picture of both university life in America during the Second World War and of life in Germany immediately following. Personalities such as Werner Heisenberg, Neils Bohr, Kurt Godel, John von Neumann and Albert Einstein are pulled out from their equations and biographies and made into fleshy, fully-human characters, each of whom plays a crucial role in one man's search for truth and another's attempt to reclaim his past. This novel reminds us, in the same manner as Sylvia Nasser's "A Beautiful Mind," that scientists are not cold and unfeeling robots in the mere pursuit of knowledge, but rather that all of them are acutely aware of the moral, social and emotional implications of their work as it impacts society on every level from the global to the personal.

Mr. Volpi has created a beautiful, sprawling, rhapsodic work that begs the questions, what is science? what is history? what is duty? what is love? He has placed all these in a strikingly relevant context that pulls the reader along. As to the question of cliche stated above, I would suggest that the examples cited would serve to inform the reader of certain information of which Mr. Volpi chooses to have the protagonist remain unaware. In all, one of the best books I have read this year.

Rating:
Summary: For thinking and curious people
Review: The plot of this novel is as dark as the history of 20th century. It is hard to classify its genre (historical fiction? suspense? thriller?), for it presents many genres rolled into one story.

It is a novel for thinking people. The narration moves fast, but it does not prevent the novel from being quite philosophical. The main idea sounds like this: there is no absolutely accurate History, for History is subjective. Any major historical event, if examined closely, is no more than a sum of selfish acts, committed by ordinary and extraodinary people. The most of people are motivated by weakness, fear, love, loyalty, ambition, insecurity or power. The participants in History can never remember the past in dispassionate, completely honest way. That's why there is no objective History: it all depends who tells it.

The book is a true gift for curious people, for it contains a very lively story of the 20th century science with its major players (Einstein, Von Neumann, Godel, Bohr, Plank, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, etc) and its major discoveries (quantum theory, theorem of incompleteness, game theory, etc). The book is a one of those rare cases, when reader can learn many mind-puckering things with pleasure.

I reread some pages two, three times - for pure joy of reading difficult things written with unique grace and lucidity.
First-rate novel, no doubt.

Rating:
Summary: What type of novel is this trying to be?
Review: Volpi's In Search of Klingsor is a good idea surrounded by a clumsy plot that ends up searching for direction.

The idea of using Quantum Mechanics, Physics and Mathematics to educate and inform the reader, as well as to carry the plot forward, is both creative and well done. The sections describing the theory and thought processes of scientific discovery are the highlight of the book. These sections assume the reader is intelligent enough to grasp the essential concepts (a compliment to the reader) and then blends the concepts in prose to move the plot forward. If Searching for Klingsor were primarily a science book then it would be an unparalled success.

However, ...Klingsor is supposed to be a mystery (apparently). It is also a romance novel and a character study. Unfortunately, none of the characters really have any redeeming qualities, and the romances between these characters is less appealing because of them. I guess a spy or mystery novel's characters are supposed to have some character flaws (there is a bad guy in there somewhere), but there seems to be a difference between a flaw and a total lack of moral character.

Ultimately, the novel suffers from a lack of direction. Is it a spy novel? A mystery? A character study? A Science Novel? The novel trys to be all of them and subsequently fails in most areas. As a discussion of some scientific and mathematical theories it succeeds well; in other areas it is less successful.