Ruth Brandon’s entertaining novel Tickling the Dragon Jonathan Cape, £14.99, ISBN 0 224 04104 5) is set in the forcedly expatriate Hungarian community of physicists and mathematicians who fled west in advance of the Nazis. Fiction offers a way to explore the troubled history of Robert Oppenheimer’s Manhattan Project, and Brandon confronts head-on the notion of loyalty and treachery, and their effects on a family shattered by the death of a nuclear physicist.
More from 51¶¯Âþ
Explore the latest news, articles and features
Physics
The once-impossible black holes that could break thermodynamics
Comment
Life
Darwin proved right about gnat-trapping carnivorous plant
News
Humans
We’re beginning to understand the sudden ‘grief attacks’ that hit mourners
Features
Comment
The best new popular science books of August 2026
Culture
Popular articles
Trending 51¶¯Âþ articles