The Human Touch

Humankind, scientists agree, is a tiny and insignificant anomaly in the vastness of the universe. But what would that universe look like if we were not here to say something about it? In this brilliant, insightful work of philosophy, beloved novelist and playwright Michael Frayn examines the biggest and oldest questions of philosophy, from space and time to relativity and language, and seeks to distinguish our subjective experience from something objectively true and knowable.

Underlying all revelations in this wise and affectionately written book is the fundamental question "If the universe is what we make it, then what are we?"

Frayn is the author of ten novels, including the bestselling Headlong, a New York Times Editors' Choice selection and a Booker Prize finalist, and Spies, which won Britain's Whitbread fiction award. He has written fourteen plays, among them Noises Off, and Democracy, as well as Copenhagen, which won three Tony Awards in 1999. A philosophy graduate of Cambridge University, Frayn is also the author of Constructions, a collection of philosophical meditations.

He lives in London.