Einstein's Dreams

It is ten minutes past six by the invisible clock on the wall. Minute by minute new objects gain form. In the dim light of morning the young patent clerk sprawls in his chair, head down on his desk. For the past several months, he has dreamed many dreams about time. His dreams have taken hold of his research. But the dreaming is finished. Out of many possible natures of time, imagined in as many nights, one seems compelling. Not that the others are impossible. The others might exist in other worlds. The patent clerk is Albert Einstein. In his dreams he imagines new worlds, in which time can be circular, or flow backwards, or slow down at higher altitudes, or take the form of a nightingale. Einstein's Dreams is an enchantment and a literary adventure, one which Salman Rushdie has compared to Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities: "And I really can't think of higher praise. It is at once intellectually provocative and touching and comic and so very beautifully written. Quite frankly I haven't been so excited by a no