Best books… Carlo Rovelli

Scientist Carlo Rovelli, author of bestseller Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, picks five of his favourite books. His latest book, Reality is Not What it Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity, is published by Penguin at £9.99

History: A Novel by Elsa Morante, 1974 (out of print). I consider Elsa Morante to be the best Italian novelist ever. The title La Storia plays on the double meaning of “storia” in Italian: history and the story. And both are here. But it is Elsa’s compassionate and enchanted gaze on the tragedy of life during the Second World War, where even those committing the worst atrocities are regarded with affection, that remains with the reader forever. The child character, little Useppe, is unforgettable.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, 1955 (Penguin £8.99). Lolita has been called the greatest love story ever. Other people objected, calling it an outrageous story of rape and the abduction of an underage girl. I think it is both.

Journey to the End of the Millennium by A.B. Yehoshua, 1999 (Halban Publishers £16.99). I love this vast, deep, intense fresco of the Middle Ages, set around the story of a righteous man’s love for his two wives.

The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac, 1958 (Penguin £9.99). It may be little known, but this short, crude love story is my favorite Kerouac; the writer sings of an era when rebellion was being nurtured. I wish rebellion could be nurtured today as well. I hope that somewhere, everywhere, something subterranean is still happening now…

The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise by R.D. Laing, 1967 (Penguin £10.99). “We are Them to Them as They are Them to Us.” An insightful and profoundly intelligent political book by the iconoclastic psychiatrist, who has intensely influenced many in my generation, and who I believe still has much to teach in these dangerous times. His radicalism, which perhaps sounded outdated a few years ago, is once again ringing true. “Them” and “Us” has reappeared to poison the grammar of our coexistence.