The MANIAC

‘Brilliantly cerebral’ - Sunday Telegraph (five stars)’[Labatut] is fast emerging as the most significant South American writer since Borges… There is no one writing like him anywhere in the world’ - Telegraph‘Reads like physicist Carlo Rovelli crossed with the cosmic horror of HP Lovecraft’ - Chris Power‘Imaginatively told through the fictionalised personal testimony of von Neumann’s friends and family, the novel is as engrossing as it is disturbing’ - Financial Times, Books of the Year‘Intoxicating… this marvel of a book, which inspires awe and dread in equal measure, is stalked by the greatest terrors of the 20th century, yet its final heart-stopping sentence makes clear the greatest terrors are yet to come’ - Daily Mail

Benjamin Labatut is a Chilean author born in the Netherlands in 1980. He was raised in The Hague before settling in Chile, where he lives and works. His book When We Cease to Understand the World has been translated into over thirty languages: it was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, selected for Barack Obama’s Summer Reading List and named a Guardian, New York Times and New Statesman Book of the Year. The MANIAC is Labatut’s first book written in English. Labatut lives with his family in Santiago, Chile.