The idea to write a historical novel about Albert Einstein came to Israeli author Sara Aharoni by chance, as was the case with all of her best-selling books.
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"I often go out for lunch with my children who work nearby," she recalled. "One time I quoted Einstein and they both looked at me with an ambiguous look. My oldest told me, 'Mom, we've noticed that you've been quoting Einstein a lot lately, how about writing about him?'"
And so the long journey of writing "And Then Came Einstein."
"I read books about Einstein and visited the Hebrew University archive, which has over 80,000 items about him. Einstein bequeathed his intellectual property to the university. Even before it was founded, he went with Chaim Weizmann on a funding trip for the institution.
"I read a lot of his letters. Everyone will agree that he is a genius and revolutionary, but beyond the general definition there were many paradoxes about his personality. Most of all, I was interested in the process he went through in his life, from a child who liked to play dice and cards, and at a later age read popular science books, then physics and mathematics books, until he became a famous scientist.
"It's not a history or biography book, it's a historical novel. I use the factual infrastructure to build upon it the literary layers, I have the literary freedom to complete the story. I like historical novels because they are part literature and part history. Who opens a history book nowadays? When I read, for example, 'Beneath a Scarlet Sky' by Mark Sullivan – about Italy during World War II – I learned a lot from him about the history of Italy. In my writing, I also use this: history alongside literature."
Q: At what point did you choose to deviate from the historical facts?
"I'll give you an example. As a child, Einstein did not have a lot of friends, and used to build towers of cards and dice. The facts are that his uncle, Jacob, gifted him the cards and dice, and also gave him an algebra book to study. Another fact is that they kept in touch throughout Einstein's life. So I built dialogues that are based on their relationship. The documents don't describe their dialogue exactly, but I got a good sense of how they spoke based on the facts."
Q: But the thing with historical documents is that it is open to interpretation.
"I am writing a story that is completely imaginary prose. Does it matter if it is real or not? Even in imaginary prose, not everything is a figment of the imagination – the story is also based on the writer's experiences. I will not write, for example, a name that is factually incorrect. The historical events must be real, but I have the freedom to write my thoughts.
"Because, after all, no one we know witnessed this or documented the way it is being done now. For example, when I wrote about Gutle, the wife of Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the founder of the dynasty [in my novel 'Mrs. Rothschild's Love'], who is a modest woman, I made sure not to dress her in revealing outfits or take her out dancing in the streets. Whatever she does will be appropriate for her character."
One of the complicated aspects of Einstein's character, which Aharoni's book delves into, deals with his pacifism and anguish over involvement in the development of the atomic bomb.
In 1939, he signed a letter addressed to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, warning that the Nazis might be developing nuclear weapons and urged the US to begin work on its own atomic weapons, a move he regretted after the US military bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"After the atomic bombs were dropped, newspapers criticizing Einstein," Aharoni said. "There was a photograph of the smoke mushroom in Hiroshima, above it the formula E=mc2 and the words 'What Einstein brought to the world' – and he just couldn't shake that. Despite the fact that his work also brought a lot of good to the world, a lot of energy for peaceful purposes, and Einstein himself worked a lot to promote world peace."
Aharoni spent five years on the initial version of the book, which centered on pacifism and told the story of artificial intelligence trying to map out Einstein's path to world peace, but that draft was abandoned.
"After so much work, I said, 'What am I doing, the attention I'm giving to artificial intelligence detracts from the importance I wanted to give to Einstein' – and I stopped. With a heavy heart, I started from the beginning. I wrote Einstein's own story, because that's the story the reader wants to hear," she said.
In the second version of the book, Aharoni wrote two volumes, each over 500 pages. The first ended with Einstein's Nobel Prize victory and the second with his death.
"But I said to myself: do some thinking, you will confuse the readers with the two volumes, you should make them into one book," said Aharoni and removed half of what she had written.
Q: Do you ever write to educate or perhaps teach about values?
"This is in no way a didactic book. Although I used to be a teacher and educator, today I am a writer. There are insights hidden in every book, and anyone can take the insights they identify with."
Q: It seems that you are trying to convey life principles to your readers through your protagonists.
"First of all I wanted to give Einstein's story. But inside the story is hidden my great need to convey some of the messages that can be conveyed from Einstein's character, for example – if you have tried one way and failed, don't try it again the same way again, try a new way. The three fundamental principles of his personality are imagination, curiosity and skepticism. He said: 'Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand', and this is also the motto of the book."
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Aharoni's debut novel, "Saltanat's Love", focused on family.
"I needed to write my mother's story, but I had no expectations that it would speak to readers. No one knew me, and at first there was no publicity for the book. I heard that an unsold book was going to be shredded, and I hoped with all my heart that that would not happen to the first edition, which had 2,000 copies," she said.
"Then the publisher told me that the entire edition was sold, and they printed another edition. It was only after one edition followed another that I was interviewed by the media. The book won an award and sold over 90,000 copies, and this first experience was so fascinating to me that I couldn't let it go, and I decided that I will continue to write."
Q: Did you never before dream of becoming a writer?
"I published my first book at the age of 55. My childhood dream was to become a teacher, and I fulfilled that dream. I grew up in the Neve Na'eman neighborhood in Hod Hasharon, and recently a classmate of mine showed me a notebook in which we used to correspond, instead of notes. It was in the eighth grade. She asked me, in writing, what do I want to be, and I answered: 'Since childhood I have wanted to be a teacher', it's written in black and white."
Q: And how do you respond to those who criticize your work?
"I learned to accept it, even when the reviews are unfair. If you want to be a writer who reaches many readers, you also need to accept the criticism. Einstein was also criticized greatly. The award is having readers read my work."
