Fission

""You are getting bogged down... losing yourself in the details."" In this treatise on life and the meaning of existence, K nigsdorf questions how we human beings can assume that the triumphs of science are always humane. The unnamed narrator of the book, a Berlin mathematician born in the late 1930s in Nazi Germany, is haunted by the ghost of Lise Meitner, a brilliant physicist who assisted in the studies to split the atom. Meitner, a genuine historical figure, is long dead, and the narrator struggles to divine why she in particular is being haunted. Like Meitner, she has achieved excellence as a woman in the field of science; like Meitner, she suffers from a degenerative disease (as does K nigsdorf herself, a former professor of physics and member of the women writer's circle that includes Christa Wolf). She was even born on the day Meitner escaped from Germany with the secrets of the atom bomb. But the narrator still searches for another tie, another link that will explain Meitner's persistent importunings. As the narrator revisits her youth and formative relationships, the reader is drawn on a journey of self-discovery. From innocence into maturity, and darkness into light, the narrator questions life and its meaning, asking if she ""died without being aware of it."" Rambling soliloquies concluding with gut-wrenching insights into our own selfishness as human beings provide the narrative with what little structure it possesses. Too crabbed and opaque to appeal to most, the novel rewards those who persist, challenging its readers to peer ever inward. (Oct.)