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Lightningis a captivating fictionalized biography of Nikola Tesla, one of the greatest inventors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, written by "the master magician of the contemporary French novel" (The Washington Post).
The book traces the notable career of Gregor, a precocious young engineer from Eastern Europe, who travels across the Atlantic at the age of twenty-eight to work alongside Thomas Edison and quickly begins to astound the world with his brilliant inventions.
As Echenoz reveals in a style that is impeccable, full of finesse and promise” (Le Monde), this profoundly solitary man holds a rare gift for imagining devices well before they come into existence, but which soon become essential for future generations. Although he works alongside the most accomplished figures of the era, Gregor becomes swept up in his world of lightning and loses sight of who is profiting from his work.
126 pages, Paperback
First published September 23, 2010
It's also evident, by the way, that Gregor prefers to be alone and live alone in general, and to look at himself in mirrors rather than at other people, and to do without women even though they find him very attractive: he's quite handsome, quite tall, brilliant, has a way with words, he's not yet forty, and he's available. Even though he's certainly not indifferent, given that he's not any fonder of men, the the fact that women cluster discreetly around him, so far Gregor apparently prefers that they keep a certain distance. But this is in part due to various specific parts of his personality.
In the time it takes to invent an arc lamp immediately patented, offered to consumers, and quickly lucrative, time enough for his partners to see a nice little return on their investment and handsome profit, Gregor finds himself promptly fired from his own business, which his associates take over, happy to celebrate their success, leaving him cleaned out. That's how he winds up back in the street--a porter, an excavation laborer, an unskilled construction worker riddled with debts--for four years.
It's an attentive ravishment, a marveling; it's pleasing and rejuvenating, a steady, pure current that he has never experienced until now with anyone, and at the end of the day he finds himself wondering if it might not be an emotion he has only heard about and never paid attention to before, a feeling difficult to define, hard to put into words. A state--let's take the plunge: let's call it love.