The Copenhagen Papers: An Intrigue

Synopsis Who is Celia, and what are the mysterious papers found concealed under the attic floorboards of an old country house? Are they simply instructions for assembling a table-tennis table, written in idiosyncratic German, or could they contain a coded message?

This is a marvellous entertainment - I'm not sure whether I should correctly describe it as either a memoir or novelette - which explores the nature of reality. It's not really a sequel to Michael Frayn's splendid play "Copenhagen", but does delve into some of the same terrain as the play. Instead, it is a witty exchange of thoughts and letters sent between Michael Frayn and actor David Burke (He portrayed physicist Niels Bohr during the play's original London production) about a set of manuscripts which allegedly date from the internment of German physicist Werner Heisenberg and his colleagues at Farm Hall immediately after the end of World War II. What follows is a terse, spellbinding mystery which is well told by both writers, replete with ample doses of English humor.

I thought COPENHAGEN was a great play, and I picked up thisbook thinking it was background for the play (the bookjacketgives some hints that that isn't the case, but I didn't botherto read that. Anyway, it turns out to be less than that, andalso much more. I was sucked into the mystery along withMichael Frayn, and read it in one sitting (it's short). Ihighly recommend it for pure entertainment.