Mobius Dick

''Mobius Dick'' (2004) is a

novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...

Andrew Crumey Andrew Crumey (born 1961) is a novelist and former literary editor of the Edinburgh newspaper ''Scotland on Sunday''. Life and career Crumey was born in Kirkintilloch, north of Glasgow, Scotland. He graduated with First Class Honours from the Uni ...

. It features an alternate world in which

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

has invaded

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...

and

Erwin Schrödinger Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger (, ; ; 12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961), sometimes written as or , was a Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist with Irish citizenship who developed a number of fundamental results in quantum theory ...

failed to find the

wave equation The (two-way) wave equation is a second-order linear partial differential equation for the description of waves or standing wave fields — as they occur in classical physics — such as mechanical waves (e.g. water waves, sound waves and s ...

that bears his name. This world becomes connected to our world due to experiments with quantum computers. The science-fiction plot centres on a mysterious mountain hospital in the Scottish highlands. Interweaving tales re-write the historical stories of

Robert Schumann Robert Schumann (; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career a ...

's stay in a similar clinic in

Endenich Endenich is a neighborhood in the western part of Bonn, Germany. Before 1904 it was an independent municipality. The village of Endenich was founded in the 8th century, and was first mentioned in 804 as ''Antiniche''. Today, about 12,000 people liv ...

and Schrödinger's visit to the Alpine sanatorium of

Arosa , neighboring_municipalities= Alvaneu, Davos, Langwies, Lantsch/Lenz, Molinis, Peist, Schmitten, Tschiertschen, Vaz/Obervaz, Wiesen , twintowns = Fukumitsu (Japan) Arosa is a town and a municipality in the Plessur Region in the canton of Gr ...

, both of which echo the situation in

Thomas Mann Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novella ...

's ''

The Magic Mountain ''The Magic Mountain'' (german: Der Zauberberg, links=no, ) is a novel by Thomas Mann, first published in German in November 1924. It is widely considered to be one of the most influential works of twentieth-century German literature. Mann st ...

''. Connections are drawn from the tales of

E. T. A. Hoffmann Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (born Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann; 24 January 1776 – 25 June 1822) was a German Romantic author of fantasy and Gothic horror, a jurist, composer, music critic and artist. Penrith Goff, "E.T.A. Hoffmann" in E ...

, particularly ''

The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr ''The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr together with a fragmentary Biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler on Random Sheets of Waste Paper'' is a complex satirical novel by Prussian Romantic-era author E. T. A. Hoffmann. It was first ...

''. English-language literature 2004 British novels Novels by Andrew Crumey British alternative history novels Novels about World War II alternate histories Picador (imprint) books {{2000s-war-novel-stub