One of the publishing sensations of recent years, garnering critical acclaim and rights sales in five countries, The Book of Kings established James Thackara as a novelist of extraordinary range and vision. This, his first novel, tells the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the mushroom cloud and our modern-day Faust, whose life acts as a perfect symbol of man's enlightened conquest of nature, his crisis of guilt, and his struggle for responsibility. Glorious descriptions of nature's might and mystery stand in contrast to man's pathetic folly' - Booklist'