This ingenious novel is nothing short of brilliant. Spanning a three month period in 1905 (April to June), this novel "recounts" a series of dreams that Albert Einstein has about time, as he is working on his special theory of relativity. Each chapter describes a different dream, with each dream allowing the young Einstein to analyze time from a different point of view (e.g. time flowing backwards; frozen time; relative time; time as a quality rather than a quantity, e.g.). This wonderful dreamscape is broken up on a few occasions when the reader is given tiny vignettes of Einstein's waking life. For most of the book, however, the reader is allowed to peer into Einstein's dreaming mind as he sleeps, while putting the finishing touches on his theory of time that would go on to revolutionize physics and change the world.
4 out of 5 stars
