Books: Angsty millennials, an island paradise and a stand-up sage

How I Won a Nobel Prize - Julius Taranto (Pan Macmillan)

Julius Taranto’s debut novel, a delicious satire about academic life, is set at the Rubin Institute on Plymouth Island (RIP). The university has been established by billionaire Buckminster Witherspoon Rubin, who is more interested in the professional excellence of his teaching staff than their dubious personal behaviour. “This new Institute said: Give me your cancellees and deplorables, your preeminent deviants, we’ll take them!”

Helen, a bright young Jewish physicist, discovers that her own mentor, Nobel Prize-winning Perry Smoot, has fallen prey to a scandal and joined their number. Helen and Smoot have been working on high-temperature superconductors which hold the promise of a sustainable global power grid. The two might just save the planet.