Helgoland, early twenties: Werner Heisenberg formulates the theory of uncertainty, thereby uprooting the laws of classical physics as well as the scientifically sharpened worldview that had prevailed for centuries. From this sense of insecurity, Jérôme Ferrari makes visible in his novel the connections that have since shaken physics and science, language and literature, culture and politics, economy and society. He depicts how the Nazis poison language and, with their terror, corrode political and cultural life to its very core, how scientists test the first nuclear bomb in New Mexico a decade later, and how, less than four weeks afterward, death reveals its new face in Hiroshima, where the powers from within the atom leave hardly a shadow of the people behind, and how, in the new millennium, Dubai becomes a symbol.