The Principle: A Novel

A finalist for the 2018 French-American Foundation Translation Prize in Fiction

A challenging read that encourages reflection, The Principle examines a world inching closer to its own destruction.

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 20th 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.

The Principle is a hypnotic glimpse into the mysteries of the physical world and a deeply personal historical interrogation that will remind readers of Laurent Binet’s HHhH and Michael Frayn’s Tony Award-winning play Copenhagen.