Book description
'Imaginative, funny and dazzlingly clever.' John Carey, Sunday
Times Mankind, scientists agree, is a tiny and insignificant anomaly
in the impersonal vastness of the universe. But what would that
universe be like if we were not here to say something about it? Would
it even be so vast, without the fact of our insignificance to give it
scale? This paradox is what Michael Frayn calls 'the world's oldest
mystery'. He shows how fleeting and indeterminate our contacts with
the world around us are. The world is what we make of it - but what
are we? 'The breadth of [Frayn's] reading is awesome and he is
fearless in interpreting, and in some cases attacking, the
philosophical or scientific dogmas of this or that revered savant.
Everywhere he is eminently sensible, especially when he is making
nonsense of our illusory certainties.' John Banville 'Brilliant and
engaging ... A dazzling and entertaining dialogue between [Frayn] and
the reader.' Patrick Masterson, Irish Times
Michael Frayn was born in London in 1933 and began his career as
a journalist on the Guardian and the Observer. His novels include
Towards the End of the Morning, The Trick of It and A Landing on the
Sun. Headlong was shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize, Whitbread
Novel Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. His
thirteen plays range from Noises Off to Copenhagen, and he has
translated a number of works, mostly from Russian. He is married to
the biographer and critic Claire Tomalin.
