The Human Touch

‘Imaginative, funny and dazzlingly clever.’ John Carey, Sunday Times

Mankind, scientists agree, is a tiny and insignificant anomaly in the impersonal vastness of the universe. But what would that universe be like if we were not here to say something about it? Would it even be so vast, without the fact of our insignificance to give it scale?

This paradox is what Michael Frayn calls ‘the world’s oldest mystery’. He shows how fleeting and indeterminate our contacts with the world around us are. The world is what we make of it – but what are we?

‘The breadth of [Frayn’s] reading is awesome and he is fearless in interpreting, and in some cases attacking, the philosophical or scientific dogmas of this or that revered savant. Everywhere he is eminently sensible, especially when he is making nonsense of our illusory certainties.’ John Banville

‘Brilliant and engaging … A dazzling and entertaining dialogue between [Frayn] and the reader.’ Patrick Masterson, Irish Times