Newton's Brain

By Jakub Arbes
 
Translated from the original Czech by David Short
 
£12.99 paperback, 127mm x 203 mm, 210 pages
 
ISBN: 978-1-914990-21-2
 
Publication date: 
UK/ EU 6 December 2023
USA/ Can 15 February 2024
 
 
A genius and trickster, apparently dies at the Battle of Königgrätz in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. However, he has not died and instead is able to procure the brain of Isaac Newton to replace his own. Subsequently, he uses Newton's knowledge of the laws of nature to overcome them, using a strange device to travel faster than the speed of light, and also to photograph the past. Newton's Brain was published 18 years before H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, and has been considered a strong influence on Wells.
 
The author. Jakub Arbes (12 June 1840, Prague (Smíchov) – 8 April 1914) was a Czech writer and intellectual. He is best known as the creator of the literary genre called romanetto and spent much of his professional life in France.In 1867, he began his career in journalism as editor of Vesna Kutnohorská, and from 1868 to 1877, as the chief editor of the National Press. Arbes was also an editor of political magazines Hlas (The Voice) and Politiky (Politics), and a sympathizer of the Májovci literary group. During this time, Arbes was persecuted and spent 15 months in the Czech Lipa prison, for leading opposition to the ruling Austro-Hungarian Empire.[1] He left Prague soon after, spending time in Paris and the South of France as part of the intellectual community there. In France, he was an associate of other "Bohemian Parisiens" such as Paul Alexis, Luděk Marold, Guy de Maupassant, Viktor Oliva, and Karel Vítězslav Mašek, as well as the French writer Émile François Zola.