In Search of Klingsor

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.