''Mobius Dick'' (2004) is a

novel A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the , a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ...

by Andrew Crumey. It features an alternate world in which

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

invaded

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-west coast of continental Europe, consisting of the countries England, Scotland, and Wales. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the List of European ...

and

Erwin Schrödinger Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger ( ; ; 12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961), sometimes written as or , was an Austrian-Irish theoretical physicist who developed fundamental results in quantum field theory, quantum theory. In particul ...

failed to find the

wave equation The wave equation is a second-order linear partial differential equation for the description of waves or standing wave fields such as mechanical waves (e.g. water waves, sound waves and seismic waves) or electromagnetic waves (including light ...

that bears his name. This world becomes connected to our world due to experiments with

quantum computer A quantum computer is a computer that exploits quantum mechanical phenomena. On small scales, physical matter exhibits properties of both particles and waves, and quantum computing takes advantage of this behavior using specialized hardware. ...

s. The title parodies ''

Moby-Dick ''Moby-Dick; or, The Whale'' is an 1851 Epic (genre), epic novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is centered on the sailor Ishmael (Moby-Dick), Ishmael's narrative of the maniacal quest of Captain Ahab, Ahab, captain of the whaler ...

''. The science-fiction plot centres on a mysterious mountain hospital in the Scottish highlands. Interweaving tales re-write the historical stories of

Robert Schumann Robert Schumann (; ; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and music critic of the early Romantic music, Romantic era. He composed in all the main musical genres of the time, writing for solo piano, voice and piano, chamber ...

's stay in a similar clinic in Endenich and Schrödinger's visit to the Alpine sanatorium of

Arosa Arosa is a List of towns in Switzerland, town and a municipalities of Switzerland, municipality in the Plessur Region in the canton of Graubünden in Switzerland. It is both a summer and a winter tourist resort. On 1 January 2013, the former mu ...

, both of which echo the situation in

Thomas Mann Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novell ...

's ''

The Magic Mountain ''The Magic Mountain'' (, ) is a novel by Thomas Mann. It was first published in Germany in November 1924. Since then, it has gone through numerous editions and been translated into many languages. It is widely considered a seminal work of 20t ...

''. Connections are drawn from the tales of E. T. A. Hoffmann, particularly '' The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr''. It was longlisted for the

James Tait Black Memorial Prize The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are literary prizes awarded for literature written in the English language. They, along with the Hawthornden Prize, are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Un ...

Reception

''A Companion to Crime Fiction'' describes ''Mobius Dick'' as a 'metaphysical detective story', comparing it with Kobo Abe's Inter Ice Age 4 and Haruki Murakami's

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is a 1985 novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. It was awarded the Tanizaki Prize in 1985. The English translation by Alfred Birnbaum was released in 1991. A new translation by Jay Rubin was released December 2024. A strange and dreamlike ...

, 'linking apocalyptic science fiction and metaphysical detective/mystery stories through antiphonal narratives, alternating "science" and "mystery" to yield reciprocal modes of displacement.'

References

External links

''Mobius Dick'' at Internet Archive

Thousand Monkeys review

Hysterical Hamster review
English-language literature 2004 British novels Novels by Andrew Crumey British alternative history novels Novels about World War II alternate histories Picador (imprint) books {{2000s-ah-novel-stub