Invention of Everything Else, The

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The story of the man who made the 20th Century and left nothing for himself... In The Invention of Everything Else, Samantha Hunt fictionalises the story of the Serbian-born scientist Nikola Tesla, inventor of radio and creator of AC electricity, a notoriously marginalised genius whose wild eccentricities, including obsessive-compulsive disorder and germ-phobia, have made him a counter-culture icon, but who faded into obscurity in his final years and died in poverty, suspected of anti-American sentiment. His carelessness about protecting his ideas through patents meant that he was eclipsed in reputation by Thomas Edison and Marconi, both of whom built fortunes by stealing Tesla's ideas. The Invention of Everything Else revolves around the twin poles of the inventor, and Louisa, a highly sensitive and imaginative young woman who encounters Tesla at the end of his life. It is also a novel about a father and a daughter, a love story, a New York story, and a literary mystery. In this meticulously researched and biographically accurate novel, Samantha Hunt weaves these elements into a narrative that is buoyant, engaging, and triumphant. The Invention of Everything Else is a beautiful, moving, and thrilling exploration of human loneliness and isolation and the opposing power of emotional and scientific imagination.

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Samantha Hunt’s fiction has been published in the New Yorker and McSweeney’s and she has written one previous novel. She received the ‘5 under 35’ award from the American National Book Foundation in 2006 and currently teaches writing and bookmaking at the Pratt Institute.