The Genius of the World Paperback - 2000

From the publisher

Ira Stein is a brilliant, troubled boy who repudiated everything his grandfather stood for and turned to Buddha. Abby Stein, Nobel Prize-winning physicist, was present as they detonated the first atomic bomb. Twenty-six years later he visits his grandson, dying of cancer at the age of twenty-one. He is incensed by Ira's inner calm and acceptance. Ira's sister Phoebe is the fulcrum on which these two poles of the family teeter back and forth. "The Genius of the World" is a sensitive and spiritual novel about bridging the gap between faith and reason.

""The Genius of the World" is a shattering story told with astonishing insight and redemptive clarity. This bold novel is a journey of the body and the spirit."-Melanie Rae Thon

An excerpt: Phoebe, 1976

This is my theory: everyone everywhere is lying almost all the time. I am anyway.

Bull shit. I'm not seeing the Buddha nature. I'm seeing everyone's alive and oblivious to the privilege. I see that they're alive and he's going to die. I can't forgive all these blind people; can't forgive Ira for going about so calmly as if it's all a lie.No one here to talk to. No one. Joanne tries, but I can't stand her tucked up in her desk chair like a cat, elbows on the desk and those reading glasses with the narrow rectanglesreducing me in their lenses. Extending her forearms, she clasps her hands, leans her elbows on her propped thighs and peers at me over the rims. I swear it's some shrink trick she learned from her father. So obvious, so fake. She's only nineteen.

That's my cue to cry, I know. To eject myself into her waiting arms, pay her her due. I stay put. N