The Principle - by Jérôme Ferrari (Paperback)

About the Book

Beguiled by the figure of German physicist Werner Heisenberg, who disrupted the assumptions of quantum mechanics with his notorious Uncertainty Principle, earning him the Nobel Prize in physics in 1932, a young, disenchanted philosopher attempts to right his own intellectual and emotional course and take the measure of the evil at work in the contemporary world. In this critically acclaimed novel, Jerome Ferrari takes stock of European culture's failings during the 20th century and inserts their implications into a compelling vision of the contemporary world. His story is one of eternal returns, of a perpetual fall of Icarus the inevitably compromised meeting between a man's soul and the mysterious beauty of the world.

Book Synopsis

"A novelist whose concern with how we should live and what we can believe puts him in the tradition of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus" (The Scotsman).

Overpopulation, nuclear war, fascism, contemporary capitalism, and climate crisis all play roles in this epistolary novel in which a young philosopher grapples with the life of Werner Heisenberg, the Nobel Prize-winning German physicist.
As he examines the dark historical events of the early twentieth century alongside the luminous elegance of Heisenberg's theoretical work, the narrator provides an intimate account of his own youthful struggles and desperate attempts to make sense of a fractured, globalized world. How could a man with such a beautiful mind have participated in such atrocities? Jérôme Ferrari offers a compelling, unflinching vision of the failings of European culture, a hypnotic glimpse into the mysteries of the physical world, and a deeply personal historical interrogation.

Review Quotes

Praise for The Principle

"A work of endless density and power...hauntingly beautiful."
--Le Monde

"Indeed, what is ultimately at stake in quantum theories is a question of language and the limitations of language in describing reality. Hence, an ideal topic to bridge science and literature, which Ferrari does masterfully in The Principle. [...] I was impressed by the beauty and depth of this short, dense book on the ultimate human choice."
--European Literature Network

"The epistolary effect of a narrative addressed to its subject is daring and uncommon, but in this case it works, part accusation, part plea, part quest and inquest. An elegant, cheerless meditation on how even the brightest people can find it in themselves to accommodate evil on the way to annihilation."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Ferrari beautifully portrays the destabilizing way new theories disrupt and disorient what's come before."
--Public Books

"The extreme beauty of Ferrari's language serves well his poetic expressive intelligence, allowing him to approach the unknown and hostile continent of quantum physics. A fascinating dive into a novelistic and entirely unexpected experience."
--L'Orient Littéraire

"The power of Jérôme Ferrari's writing resides in its precision, its delicate lyricism, which is evident from the very first sentences, and its metaphysical questioning. The reader will find this combination intoxicating."
--La Cause Littéraire

"With a construction as precise as that of a theorem, The Principle moves beyond the single evocation of a life and its murky areas to better interrogate the basis of all truth."
--L'Express

"A sparse, elegant story."
--Historical Novels Review

Praise for Jérôme Ferrari

"A novelist whose concern with how we should live and what we can believe
puts him in the tradition of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus."
--Allan Massie, The Scotsman

"Astute, cunning, brilliant...[Sermon of the Fall of Rome] is an earthy, philosophical tract drawing on history and human experience."
--The Irish Times

About the Author

Jérôme Ferrari is a writer and translator born in 1968 in Paris. His 2012 novel, The Sermon on the Fall of Rome, won the Prix Goncourt. He is also the author of Where I Left My Soul (MacLehose, 2012).

For Europa Editions, Howard Curtis has translated five novels by Jean-Claude Izzo, including all three books in his Marseilles trilogy, as well as fiction by Francisco Coloane, Canek Sánchez Guevara, Caryl Férey, and Santiago Gamboa.