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2009 Longlist

Omega Minor

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ABOUT
THE BOOK

Berlin, Spring of 1995. While a group of neo-Nazis are preparing an anniversary bash of disastrous proportions, an old physics professor returns to Potsdam to atone for his sins, an Italian postdoc designs an experiment that will determine the fate of the universe, and, in a room at Le Charité, a Holocaust survivor tells his tale to the willing ear of a young psychologist. Who is that talking cat, why do ghosts of SS soldiers roam the city, and what is Speer’s favorite actress up to? Moving back and forth between the main stages of the past century—Berlin united and divided, Boston, Los Alamos, Auschwitz—Omega Minor is a novel of big ideas, a tale of survival of the soul cast in a whirlwind plot that is in turns smart, inquisitive, funny, violent, nutty, pornographic, moving, deeply compassionate, and profoundly moral. Or not.

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR Paul
Verhaeghen

ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Paul
Verhaeghen

NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

An overwhelming masterpiece about survival and the madness of the twentieth century.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Country
Belgium
Original Language
Dutch
Publisher
Dalkey Archive Press
Translator
Paul Verhaeghen

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