Hijos de la radiación

Long before Hiroshima, Chernobyl, exclusion zones, and the Doomsday Clock, the world experienced a golden age of radiation. In step with scientific advancements, homes were filled with radioactive products that promised to cure illnesses, extend life, and enhance beauty. The serious risks involved were still largely unknown. Joe Dunthorne always wanted to write about his great-grandfather Siegfried, a Jewish chemist who treaded that slippery slope from scientific optimism to war crimes, something he chose to conceal in his two-thousand-page memoirs, in which he merely confessed to having made a grave mistake. Because, after inventing the popular radioactive toothpaste Doramad—which even his pregnant wife used—this man with a complicated psychiatric history dedicated himself to developing gas mask filters and ended up directing a chemical weapons laboratory for the Nazis. Like bomb disposal experts clad in protective suits, who continue to defuse bombs on European soil, this book traces the radioactive echo of 20th-century history. A silent and invisible echo that periodically resurfaces, no matter how much we bury it under layers of concrete.