The Maniac

Brilliantly cerebral - Sunday Telegraph (five stars)

[Labatut] is fast emerging as the most significant South American writer since Borges... There is no one writing like him anywhere in the world - Telegraph

Reads like physicist Carlo Rovelli crossed with the cosmic horror of HP Lovecraft - Chris Power, Sunday Times

Imaginatively told through the fictionalised personal testimony of von Neumann's friends and family, the novel is as engrossing as it is disturbing - Financial Times, Books of the Year

Intoxicating... this marvel of a book, which inspires awe and dread in equal measure, is stalked by the greatest terrors of the 20th century, yet its final heart-stopping sentence makes clear the greatest terrors are yet to come - Daily Mail

Darkly intelligent and feverishly propulsive - Observer

Talent, ambition, skill, intelligence - [are] present in abundance - Guardian, Book of the Day

Virtuosic... Labatut is that vanishingly uncommon thing: a contemporary writer of thrilling originality... The MANIAC is a work of dark, eerie and singular beauty - Washington Post

A brooding, heady narrative that is addictively interesting... gripping, provocative - Wall Street Journal

A dark, strange novel by a rising literary star - New Scientist

Captivating - Irish Times

Monstrously good... Reads like a dark foundation myth about modern technology but told with the pace of a thriller - Mark Haddon

In fictionalising the history of the atomic bomb, Labatut has landed on a chilling way to dramatise our contemporary fears. Science Fiction-tinged nightmares about new nuclear threats and an alien, self-learning system of intelligence are made both more real and understandable through the voices of the people who gave birth to them - Literary Review

Thrilling - and chilling... A gripping read - Marie Claire, Best Books of 2023

A necessary book, a harrowing one, and it will change the way you look at the world around you - LitHub

As addictive as a true crime tale - Mail on Sunday