A Game with Sharpened Knives

The reviews have been simply stunning for this debut novel set in Ireland in 1941. Nobel prize-winning physicist Erwin Schrodinger was forced to flee Austria in 1933 after the Nazis invaded but was saved from disgrace and danger when the revolutionary Irish leader, Eamon de Vaera, invited him to Ireland. The novel is set against the background of a country not truly at peace, either with Germany, or with its neighbour across the Irish Sea. Erwin Schrodinger, cosmopolitan intellectual and emotional enigma, is living in cramped exile on the outskirts of Dublin, with his wife, his lover, and their child. But in the pervading atmosphere of fear and distrust, Schrodinger lives a precarious existence, haunted by his past and by mysterious threats in the present.

“This is a novel of many layers, all of them startlingly evocative. It's about war, science, love - or the lack of it - big ideas and small kindness. It's breathtaking.”

This book is a brilliantly executed exercise in mood, which conveys the vulnerability, confusion and even the surreality of Schrodinger's refugee existence - TELEGRAPH (5/6/06)

- IRISH TIMES (17.6.06) - Arminta Wallace

Readers for whom the name Erwin Schrodinger conjures up only a vague image of a cat will find this absorbing novel, based on his wartime years in Dublin, a revelation. - THE TIMES (20.05.06) - Christina Koning

An atmospheric psychodrama... This evocative novel is distinguished by an undercurrent of gnawing doubt, and potent images abound. - GUARDIAN (17.6.06)

A surprisingly insightful novel, beautifully written - GOOD BOOK GUIDE

Neil Belton was born in Dublin and brought up in the suburb of Clontarf. He is an Editorial Director at Faber & Faber and the author of The Good Listener: Helen Bamber, A Life Against Cruelty which won the Irish Times prize in 1999.

The reviews have been simply stunning for this debut novel set in Ireland in 1941. Nobel prize-winning physicist Erwin Schrodinger was forced to flee Austria in 1933 after the Nazis invaded but was saved from disgrace and danger when the revolutionary Irish leader, Eamon de Vaera, invited him to Ireland. The novel is set against the background of a country not truly at peace, either with Germany, or with its neighbour across the Irish Sea. Erwin Schrodinger, cosmopolitan intellectual and emotional enigma, is living in cramped exile on the outskirts of Dublin, with his wife, his lover, and their child. But in the pervading atmosphere of fear and distrust, Schrodinger lives a precarious existence, haunted by his past and by mysterious threats in the present.

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