The Invention of Everything Else

Description

The Invention of Everything Else is a tremendously powerful and moving exploration of human loneliness and isolation, and the opposing powers of emotional and scientific imagination. Louisa is an imaginative and curious chambermaid who, while cleaning rooms at the New Yorker Hotel, stumbles across a man living permanently in room 3327, which he has transformed into a scientific laboratory. Brought together by a shared interest in the pigeons that nest in the hotel, Louisa discovers that the mysterious guest is Nikola Tesla, one of the most brilliant - and most neglected - inventors of the twentieth century.The Invention of Everything Else charts the relationship of the girl and the genius during the last week of Tesla's life, when sinister forces are closing in on him. As well as being an engaging literary mystery, this exceptional novel movingly tells the life story of this extraordinary man and also recounts the heartbreak and redemption of one ordinary family...

Samantha Hunt's fiction has been published in the New Yorker and McSweeney's and she is also author of the novel, The Seas. She received the '5 under 35' award from the American National Book Foundation in 2006 and currently teaches writing and bookmaking at the Pratt Institute.

Completely original, one of the most distinctive and unforgettable voices I've read in years * Dave Eggers * Samantha Hunt is an exciting find - a fresh, original voice... a fantastical love story... literary gold... It should appeal to fans of The Time Traveller's Wife and Donna Tartt * Sunday Express * Both intelligent and compassionate... admirably ambitious... beautifully conjured * Daily Telegraph * A beguiling mix of love, death, pigeons and time travel, it's a gem of a story about the power of imagination...An ingenious work of historical fiction * Marie Claire * Samantha Hunt's fantasy comes closer than any biography to solving the riddle of Tesla's commercial and personal failings... The Invention of Everything Else is perfect for nights spent in the wrong hotel, once your travel plans have, as usual, gone subtly awry * New Scientist *