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The Invention of Everything Else
The Invention of Everything Else
Jul 27, 2025 2:45 AM

Author:Samantha Hunt

The Invention of Everything Else

Louisa is an imaginative and curious chambermaid who, while cleaning rooms at the New Yorker Hotel, stumbles across a man living permanently in room 3327, which he has transformed into a scientific laboratory. Brought together by a shared interest in the pigeons that nest in the hotel, Louisa discovers that the mysterious guest is Nikola Tesla, one of the most brilliant - and most neglected - inventors of the twentieth century.

The Invention of Everything Else charts the relationship of the girl and the genius during the last week of Tesla's life, when sinister forces are closing in on him. As well as being an engaging literary mystery, this exceptional novel movingly tells the life story of this extraordinary man and also recounts the heartbreak and redemption of one ordinary family...

Reviews

Completely original, one of the most distinctive and unforgettable voices I've read in years

—— Dave Eggers

Samantha Hunt is an exciting find - a fresh, original voice... a fantastical love story... literary gold... It should appeal to fans of The Time Traveller's Wife and Donna Tartt

—— Sunday Express

Both intelligent and compassionate... admirably ambitious... beautifully conjured

—— Daily Telegraph

A beguiling mix of love, death, pigeons and time travel, it's a gem of a story about the power of imagination...An ingenious work of historical fiction

—— Marie Claire

Samantha Hunt's fantasy comes closer than any biography to solving the riddle of Tesla's commercial and personal failings... The Invention of Everything Else is perfect for nights spent in the wrong hotel, once your travel plans have, as usual, gone subtly awry

—— New Scientist

Hunt presents a convincing portrayal of youthful confusion... [Her] gray, Chekhovian moments mark Hunt as a writer to watch

—— Time Out New York

Samantha Hunt's writing is free of affectation and carries surprising conviction

—— The New Yorker

Dazzling

—— Vanity Fair

A brilliant evocation of the life of the inventor Nikola Tesla

—— Guardian

Remarkable... Hunt wears her historical and scientific learning lightly

—— Financial Times

Hunt's deft blend of sf elements and romantic subplots may remind readers of Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, while her prose style and attention to historical detail are on a par with Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Hunt's greatest triumph, however, lies in her depiction of Tesla, who wavers between genius and madness with carefully controlled charm.

—— Library Journal

A fantastical story that engages the heart and mind, as Hunt pays tribute to the power of invention, and the enduring strength of love

—— Psychologies

Hunt has done a fine job of reanimating the dead and reawakening my curiosity about this odd, overlooked man... Hunt's prose is sylish and tasty and her observations wise and witty

—— Scotsman

Weird and wonderful debut novel

—— Red

Remarkable...Hunt wears her historical and scientific learning lightly

—— Financial Times

An ambitious conflation of fact and fiction

—— Literary Review

Samantha Hunt's fantasy comes closer than any biography to solving the riddle of Tesla's commercial and personal failings ... The Invention of Everything Else is perfect for nights spent in the wrong hotel, once your travel plans have, as usual, gone subtly awry

—— New Scientist

a fascinating blend of fact, fiction, history and dare I say, science fiction surrounding the weird and wonderful life of Nikola Tesla the acknowledged father of radio and AC electricity.

—— Dovegreyreader

her portrait of Tesla buzzes with vitality

—— Metro

This unusual novel skilfully interweaves the story of the eccentric inventor of radio and AC electricity with that of Louisa ... a compelling novel.

—— Emma Lee-Potter , Express

A sophisticated pastiche of science fiction, fantasy, melodrama, and historical anecdote....It all adds up to a precocious math of human marvel

—— Elle
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