Luminous Bodies: A Novel of Marie Curie

“Marie Curie’s professional achievements aren’t slighted in Jersild’s first novel, Luminous Bodies, but what fascinates her are the Nobel-Prize-winning scientist’s personal struggles in a patriarchal world . . . Choosing to narrate Curie’s experiences in an inventive first-person voice adds immediacy to a story filled with dramatic triumphs and disappointments.”
—New York Times

"Devon Jersild’s beautiful novel is alchemic, bringing Marie Curie—the scientist, the lover, the mother, the immigrant, the Nobel Laureate—to life. This tense, moving, riveting story burns hot: it’s historical fiction at its very best."
—Chris Bohjalian, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Flight Attendant and Hour of the Witch

In the popular imagination, Marie Curie was all brilliance and unshakeable drive. Luminous Bodies is a tender exploration of the vulnerable woman behind the legend.

In the vein of Georgia (Dawn Tripp) and Matrix (Lauren Groff), the narrative follows Marie from girlhood in Poland to the battlefields of World War I, focusing on her marriage, widowhood, and love affair with physicist Paul Langevin—after which she was ostracized from society and the scientific community. Haunted by self-doubt, she turned to Hertha Ayrton, the scientist and suffragist who drew her back from the brink of suicide.

How did Curie endure all this, and still achieve so much? What sustained her rich emotional, sexual, and intellectual life—and what were the costs? Jersild explores these questions in this radiant novel.