In this wartime tale of tortured genius, human frailty and death, Janna Lavin weaves together a story of two of the twentieth century’s finest minds. Alan Turing, breaker of the Enigma code, is an eccentric whose brilliant war work is rewarded with persecution for his homosexuality. Kurt Gödel is the greatest logician of the age, and a paranoid delusional, who starves himself to death.
Cutting between Vienna and England, Lavin imagines the conversations that took place around the pair, and paints a lively, engaging and ultimately tragic picture of two men obsessed with abstract truth yet struggling to find their place in the everyday world. Gödel’s discovery that there are limits to what mathematics can prove was shocking at the time, and paved the way for Turing’s development of the first computer. Yet Gödel and Turing diverged in their religious responses to logic: while Gödel found spirituality in the shortcomings of mathematics, Turing viewed humans as soulless biological machines. ‘Where is God in 1+1=2?’ Lavin ponders through her characters.
She also makes much of the ancient brain teaser, the Liar Paradox, in which the liar says ‘this statement is false’. Gödel, in particular, exploited this dilemma in his work, but it is Lavin herself who seems to have the most fun with it, using it to highlight the fact that fiction is, by its very nature, a lie, but in most cases based upon truth. She confesses, ‘I am that liar’; then counters, ‘The truth is it’s still me telling this story.’ That Turing’s favourite Walt Disney cartoon was ‘Snow White’, and he died by eating a poisoned apple, is clearly the cherry on the cake.
Fact or fiction? Truth or lies? The book gets you thinking about the big questions, but Lavin’s light style and tone ensure it remains accessible even to those of us who fall outside the scope of genius.
