Article & Journal Resources

By Phil Kloer
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution


Have you ever delved into a novel you could tell was amazing, but it was so challenging you didn’t know if you could finish it?

I felt that way about “Ulysses,” and “Gravity’s Rainbow,” and I’m currently feeling that way midway through the new book “Omega Minor,” by Georgia Tech professor Paul Verhaeghen.

It’s really good. And really hard. Verhaeghen is a cognitive psychology teacher at Ga. Tech, and originally from Belgium. He wrote “Omega Minor” in Dutch, then translated it himself into English. It just came out, and Time magazine gave it a huge rave. Read it here.

Verhaeghen will do an appearance and signing at 7 p.m. Monday Dec. 17 at A Cappella Books in Little Five Points, and he was more than willing to indulge me with an interview. The whole Q&A is scheduled to run in Saturday’s paper, and a free-lance review will run in Sunday’s Arts & Books section. I asked Verhaeghen how he would tell someone what “Omega Minor” is about, just because it’s about so much, and this is what he answered.

“It’s the story of two Jewish boys growing up in the 1920s, one escapes just in time, goes to the United States, becomes a physicist, works in the Manhattan Project, and starts having serious doubts about what is happening there with the nuclear bomb. And the second boy stays in Berlin and ends up in the Resistance and in Auschwitz and escapes. And it all comes together in 1995. … So it deals with the Holocaust, it deals with physics, it deals with the nature of the universe. If I have to sum it up in seven words, I say that it’s about the things that make life really interesting: war, love, sex, death, pigeons, food and blasphemy.

Yes, pigeons. But trust me, you’ll remember the Holocaust scenes and the sex scenes a lot more. Verhaeghen can really write, and some of his scenes are just searing.

I’m about 300 pages into “Omega Minor,” less than half way, and it’s a very engaging read in some ways, and a very tough one in other ways. I doubt if anyone here will have had much chance yet to get into it, as it’s just out, but I would encourage you to:

a. Go get a copy and dive in.

b. Talk about your own experience with tackling a challenging book that you worried might end up being too much for you. (To circle back to the beginning, and in the interest of full disclosure, I never finished “Ulysses” or “Rainbow.”) I hope I can finish “Omega Minor.”