Mr. G: A Novel about the Creation

Product Description With echoes of Calvino, Rushdie, and Saramago, this is a stunningly imaginative work that celebrates the tragic and joyous nature of existence on the grandest possible scale. ''As I remember, I had just woken up from a nap when I decided to create the universe.'' - - So begins Alan Lightman's playful and profound new novel, Mr. g, the story of Creation as narrated by God. Bored with living in the shimmering Void with his bickering Uncle Deva and Aunt Penelope, Mr. g creates time, space, and matter--then moves on to stars, planets, consciousness, and finally intelligent beings with moral dilemmas. But even the best-laid plans can go awry, and Mr. g discovers that with his creation of space and time come unforeseen consequences--especially in the form of the mysterious Belhor, a clever and devious rival. An intellectual equal to Mr. g, Belhor delights in provocation: he demands an explanation for the inexplicable, requests that intelligent creatures not be subject to rational laws, and maintains the necessity of evil. As Mr. g watches his favorite universe grow into maturity, he begins to understand how the act of creation can change the Creator himself. Review ''Here is the creation of the universe and the young creator who grapples with what he has made--and ultimately with responsibility and loss . . . A gem of a novel that is strange, witty, erudite, and alive with Lightman's playful genius.'' --Junot Díaz, New York Times bestselling author''This delightful novel takes the reader on a lighthearted romp through the development of the universe from the big bang to its cold, dark end, addressing along the way some of the big questions that inevitably arise from the development of intelligent life.'' --Jerome Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning physicist''Just as he did with his incomparable Einstein's Dreams, Alan Lightman again surprises us with a work that is utterly original in both form and content. Mr. g is a philosophical fable which is at turns hilarious and moving, rendered with a literary hand so deft that the weightiest metaphysical topics levitate into pure delight.'' --Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, philosopher and author ''It would not seem possible for Alan Lightman to match his earlier tour de force, Einstein's Dreams, but in Mr. g he has done so--with wit, imagination, and transcendent beauty.'' --Anita Desai, Indian novelist About the Author ALAN LIGHTMAN was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and educated at Princeton and the California Institute of Technology, where he received a PhD in theoretical physics. An active research scientist in astronomy and physics for two decades, he has also taught both subjects on the faculties of Harvard and MIT. His novels include Einstein's Dreams, which was an international bestseller; Good Benito; The Diagnosis, which was a finalist for the National Book Award; and Reunion. His essays have appeared in the New York Review of Books, New York Times, Nature, Atlantic Monthly, and the New Yorker. He lives in Massachusetts, where he is adjunct professor of humanities at MIT.