Syme Papers

Douglas Pitt is a man obsessed. Laughed at, mocked, and dismissed at every turn, Pitt has spent the best part of an unremarkable academic career attempting to prove the genius of Samuel Highgate Syme (b. 1794, Baltimore; soldier, geologist, inventor).

Pitt's postulation is simple enough: that Syme, through some fault, wrong-doing, conspiracy or mischance, has not been credited with the recognition he deserves for hitting upon a key discovery in the advance of modern science - the theory of continental drift.

Lacking the crucial last piece of the puzzle to convince his peers and normalize his family life, Pitt finally stumbles into the good fortune he hopes will make his name: he uncovers a contemporary manuscript written by a fledgling German scientist, Friedrich Muller, which recounts a year (1826) in the company of the irrepressible Syme.

Switching between these beguiling and colourful narratives, The Syme Papers takes the reader on an odyssey into the heart of Maryland and Virginia in the 1820s by way of London and Texas today. An epic stew of intellectual procrastination, early nineteenth-century picaresque and late twentieth-century angst, it is a novel of genius and failure; of a man who thought he could prove the world was hollow, and in the glorious process of discovery, broke his own heart.