Michael Frayn
Description
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Books
Copenhagen
"Copenhagen is a reimagining of the mysterious wartime meeting between two Nobel laureates to discuss the atomic bomb. In 1941 the German physicist Werner Heisenberg made a strange trip to Copenhagen to see his Danish counterpart, Niels Bohr. They were old friends and close colleagues, and they had revolutionized atomic physics in the 1920s with their work together on quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle. But now the world had changed, and the two men were on opposite sides in a world war. The meeting was fraught with danger and embarrassment; it ended in disaster." "Why Heisenberg went to Copenhagen and what he wanted to say to Bohr are questions that have exercised historians ever since. In Michael Frayn's new play, an ambitious, fiercely intelligent, and daring dramatic sensation, Heisenberg meets Bohr and his wife, Margrethe, once again to look for the answers and to work out - just as they had worked out the internal functioning of the atom - how we can ever know why we do what we do."--Jacket.
Here
The latest work by the distinguished French writer Nathalie Sarraute, Here recreates the frustration of attempting to recall a forgotten word. Just beyond the grasp of memory, the elusive name of a person, a tree, or of a well-known artist is pursued through the dialogues, repetitions, and silences of everyday speech. The struggle to remember brings out the many interpretations and misunderstandings caused by the simplest and most banal of phrases - a theme found throughout Sarraute's work. As in previous books, she explores the minute, almost imperceptible responses to spoken words and thoughts, describing them with a minimum of concrete or social context. Although highly abstract, Here is surprisingly sensual in its analogies: intimidating laughter from the ever-present, threatening crowd is frantically mopped up with a sponge and a bucket of disinfectant; the words of subdued politeness are like low-fat foods lacking in real nourishment; the suggestion of obscure menace is experienced as a whiff of cheap make-up.
The trick of it
An authoress is invited by a lecturer who has devoted his life to studying and teaching her nine novels and 27 short stories. As she arrives to speak to his students he feels he has a chance to resolve the one remaining mystery at the heart of things.
Noises off
"Noises Off, the classic farce by the Tony Award-winning author of Copenhagen, is not one play but two: simultaneously a traditional sex farce, Nothing On, and the back-stage "drama" that develops during Nothing On's final rehearsal and tour. The two begin to interlock as the characters make their exits from Nothing On only to find themselves making entrances into the even worse nightmare that's happening backstage. In the end, at the disastrous final performance, the two plots can be kept separate no longer, and coalesce into a single collective nervous breakdown."--BOOK JACKET.
Alphabetical order
A provincial newspaper office in the 1970s - and it's another day of chaos in the cuttings library. Files all over the floor, phones left ringing. And where is Lucy, the librarian ... ? Her life (when she finally arrives), and the lives of the journalists who take refuge in her muddled retreat, turn out to be as confused as the library itself. Into this comfortable little world steps Lesley, Lucy's new assistant. She's young, bright, and she wants system and order. She wants things to change. 'Alphabetical Order' was first produced at Hampstead Theatre, London in March 1975.
The Tin Men
At a top-secret Army training facility in the Mojave Desert, Special Agents Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor plunge into a deadly web of military intrigue, AI technology, and robot soldiers as they unravel the shocking murder of a senior scientist in this gripping thriller from New York Times bestselling authors Nelson DeMille and Alex DeMille. Army CID Special Agents Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor team up for their toughest assignment yet as they are dispatched to Camp Hayden to investigate the death of Major Roger Ames, the chief scientist in charge of the top-secret war games being conducted between a platoon of Army Rangers and a fleet of “lethal autonomous weapons.” Brodie and Taylor find themselves at ground zero of the next generation of warfare, and must untangle the complex web of alliances, animosities, and secret agendas among the men and women of the isolated facility. In a place cut off from the world and exposed to the harsh desert elements, everyone is a suspect—from the zealous camp commander who pushes his men to the limit, to the Rangers slipping into madness due to isolation, grueling training, and rampant abuse of performance-enhancing drugs, to the late Major Ames’s own research colleagues. Brodie and Taylor must uncover layers of deception to find the hidden hand behind the murder of Major Ames, and the real purpose of the activities at Camp Hayden and its terrifying arsenal of next-generation weapons. This gripping thriller, the final novel from the legendary Nelson DeMille, coauthored with his son Alex DeMille, is a masterful blend of suspense and cutting-edge technology. It is a page-turning and thought-provoking exploration of the implications of AI in modern warfare and is a must-read for fans of military thrillers.
First and last
"This book maps the creative range of a great American artist. Its 219 images, chosen from more than 20,000, span forty-five years of continuous activity"--Publisher's note (page ).
The human touch
What do we really know? What are we in relation to the world around us? Playwright and novelist Frayn takes on the great questions of his career--and of our lives. Humankind, scientists agree, is an insignificant speck 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 there be numbers if there were no one to count them? With wit, charm, and brilliance, this epic work of philosophy sets out to make sense of our place in the scheme of things. Our contact with the world around us, Michael Frayn shows, is always fleeting and indeterminate, yet we have nevertheless had to fashion a comprehensible universe in which action is possible. But how do we distinguish our subjective experience from what is objectively true and knowable?--From publisher description.