America's Children

The first U.S. publication of James Thackara's debut novel, a work of sacred and profane vision that explores the enigmatic J. Robert Oppenheimer and chronicles the birth of the nuclear age.One of the publishing sensations of recent years, garnering critical acclaim and rights sales in five countries, The Book of Kings, a novel that harnesses myth, history and philosophy to chronicle of Europe's helpless drift toward Nazism, established James Thackara as a novelist of extraordinary range and vision. America's Children is Thackara's first novel, now published for the first time in the United States.It is a multi-layered story of Christian and Marxist values; of love of family and land; of invisible high energy particles and Pentagon technocrats; of thrilling scientific discovery and the unspeakable reality of Hiroshima. The great classical myths of man's mastery over nature suffuse America's Children with a seductive, deathly glow. A novel for our age, America's Children is a sublime and truly American story of the theft of atomic fire, the agonies of conscience, and our future in a nuclear world.