In Search of Klingsor: The International Bestselling Novel [Hardcover]

Jorge Volpi (Author), Kristina Cordero (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 25, 2002

In his international bestseller In Search of Klingsor, Jorge Volpi takes us from the Institute of Advanced Study to the heart of Hitler's Germany, where the line between truth and lies is all but dissolved.Mysterious, seductive, and immediately engrossing, this startlingly accomplished thriller explores the nexus between science and human nature and how they shaped the world in the aftermath of World War II. In 1940, Francis Bacon, a brilliant young American physicist, is invited to join the prestigious institute at Princeton, the world's foremost physics research facility. But a series of personal indiscretions forces him to accept a different, more sinister, assignment: uncover "Klingsor," Hitler's top adviser on the scientific work in the Third Reich, including the race to create the first atomic bomb. Bacon's efforts to expose the truth lead him to Gustav Links, a survivor of the attempted coup against Hitler. With Link's help, he continues researching postwar Germany -- in an era when a secret was really a secret and a lie wasn't necessarily a sin -- and falls into a complicated relationship with an alluring woman. His search for Klingsor, an ominous and seemingly omnicient adversary, is part mystery, part psychological puzzle, part witty intellectual game. In Search of Klingsor places real people in speculative historical fiction, combining the ingenuity of a scientific investigation with the suspense of a great espionage novel.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Broad in scope and supremely ambitious, this novel (the first in a projected trilogy) by Mexican writer Volpi succeeds at several levels as a thriller about a U.S. military officer seeking to ferret out the identity of the scientist who directed Nazi research during WWII, as a scientific search for truth by a physicist who encounters Einstein, Von Neumann, Schrodinger, Neils Bohr and other great minds of the 20th century and as a literary novel about a moral quest to destroy an evil that dates back to ancient German folklore. The framework for the novel is a scientific duel between Francis Bacon, the young American physicist who draws the assignment of trying to track down "Klingsor," the mysterious, diabolical head of Nazi research, and Gustav Links, a German physicist who worked on the Nazi atomic team and who agrees to help Bacon. Bacon balks at being assigned to Germany in the postwar years, but when he locates Links he embarks on a fascinating scientific journey that involves realistic and compelling meetings with the likes of Heisenberg, G"del and Schr"dinger. Heisenberg is the most promising suspect, but Bacon begins to doubt the physicist's guilt when he becomes involved with a German woman named Irene who begins to insist that Links is the culprit. Volpi's impeccable, extensive research provides the fuel for much of his taut prose, but he also mixes in plenty of poetic passages about the nature of physics, observation and discovery. The guessing game as to Klingsor's true identity provides considerable suspense, and Volpi adds resonance and moral weight by reaching back into German folklore. In an era in which science has become the primary vehicle for moving society forward, Volpi offers a poignant, powerful reminder of the potential and the peril involved when we harness the forces of nature.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Director of the Mexican Cultural Institute in Paris, Volpi relaxes by writing thrillers. Here, a young physicist who joins Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study in the late 1940s is trapped into undertaking a search for "Klingsor," once adviser to Hitler on the atomic bomb.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 414 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (June 25, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743201183
• ISBN-13: 978-0743201186
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,828,139 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, intriguing, and unique., July 15, 2002

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: In Search of Klingsor: The International Bestselling Novel (Hardcover)

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

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In Search of Truth, July 30, 2002

By 

Matthew C Saunders (Columbus, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In Search of Klingsor: The International Bestselling Novel (Hardcover)

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.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars What type of novel is this trying to be?, July 30, 2002

By 

Thomas Johnson (Petoskey, MI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In Search of Klingsor: The International Bestselling Novel (Hardcover)

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.