This intriguing and beautifully crafted book begins with Conrad's Heart of Darkness and ends with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the literal link being that the uranium used in the atomic bombs was mined in the Belgian Congo and the metaphorical link being that Conrad's dark vision was realised in the creation of the nuclear bomb. The route, Marnham says, is a story of "science, death, deceit and cruelty". Links are also drawn between the German scholar Aby Warburg, who studied the snake dance of the New Mexican Hopi Indians (the symbolic purpose of which was to harness the power of lightning), and J Robert Oppenheimer, who in the same New Mexican desert harnessed atomic energy to build the most destructive weapon ever. The juxtapositions and coincidences are often metaphorical rather than logical, but Marnham's skill and humane outlook cause it to hang together.
