Virginie Ollagnier

Ils ont tué Oppenheimer

They Killed Oppenheimer

January 7, 2022
Novel
352 pages
19 €
9782380822199
978-2-3808-2219-9
																Virginie Ollagnier, Ils ont tué Oppenheimer
																Virginie Ollagnier, Ils ont tué Oppenheimer

Robert Oppenheimer loved women, racing trains in his powerful car, riding through storms on his boat, and galloping along the roads of New Mexico. Above all, he loved physics because it awakened in him the philosopher, the poet. A rich poet, a philosopher concerned about the future of the poor, a philanthropist who financed the Communist Party and the International Brigades fighting against Franco in Spain. So, when in 1942 General Groves chose him to direct research on the creation of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, the secret services, counter-espionage and the FBI joined forces to prevent the appointment of a communist. Groves resisted, convinced of Robert Oppenheimer’s loyalty. Three years later, after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oppenheimer’s fame and influence are immense. For all, he became “Doctor Atomic”. But this intellectual, sensitive to art and humanistic demands, became aware of the responsibility of science and opposed the desire to divert it to the benefit of the army. He makes powerful enemies within the military-industrial complex, which devises a trap to bring him down.
Ils ont tué Oppenheimer
plunges us into the heart of the Cold War and the fearsome dialogue between science and power. It is the book of a world tilt, generated by the arms race, but also the more intimate book of a blurred man, both victim and executioner, symbol of the scientist tormented by the moral consequences of his discoveries. Virginie Ollagnier makes Robert Oppenheimer a formidable fictional character.

The author

Virginie Ollagnier, born in Lyon in 1970.
She has published three novels with Éditions Liana Levi, Toutes ces vies qu’on abandonne, L’incertain and Rouge argile, four comic books with Éditions Glénat, the trilogy Kia Ora and Nellie Bly, dans l’antre de la folie, two Rues de Lyon with Épicerie Séquentielle Les lumières du huit décembre, Pique-nique sur l’île Barbe and a special issue on Daisy Georges-Martin.
She is also a founding member of La Revue Dessinée.

Strong points

An intimate and political novel that plunges us into the heart of the Cold War and into the complex thinking of the father of the bomb.

January 7, 2022
Novel
352 pages
19 €
9782380822199
978-2-3808-2219-9