Like Rabbits, the astonishing debut from Rhodes scholar and award-winning author Nayani Jensen, brings together short fiction that imagines the inner lives of people poised at the intersection of history and science. A new father in the Golden Age of Dutch Science searches for the source of life; two aviators at the cusp of their careers grapple with adulthood and a disastrous crash; a young woman prepares to write the Olympics of mathematics exams in nineteenth-century Cambridge; a manuscript changes hands from 9th-century Baghdad across continents, altering meanings as it goes. Based on historical figures and archival research, in each story the deeply personal and the scientific layer to produce unexpected new meanings. Like Rabbits will appeal to fans of scientific biography (Oppenheimer, The Theory of Everything), or to readers of Benjamin Labatut and Andrea Barrett.

Synopses

1. “Broken Parts” (Mohamed Al-Khwarizmi, Baghdad, 820): Al-Khwarizmi writes his Al-jabr (Algebra, or “to reunite broken parts”) and the text travels through hands, languages and continents, accumulating unexpected meanings.

2. “Like Rabbits” (Regnier De Graaf, Delft, the Dutch Republic, 1672): A new father fight for priority in the discovery of the human egg while grappling with the death of his infant son. The story won the 2024 Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers from the Writer’s Trust of Canada.

3. “The Motion of the Heart” (William Harvey, Oxford, 1642): The celebrated physician to Charles I helps the King flee during the English Civil War while realizing that despite his best efforts, his work on the circulation of blood has taken on enormous political significance.

4. “Proof” (Philippa Fawcett, Cambridge, 1890): A young woman races the men in the Olympics of mathematics exams in 19th-century Cambridge.

5. “A Garden of Stars” (Caroline Herschel, Hanover, 1848): An elderly female astronomer reflects on wasted potential, legacy, and aging as she experiments with the new process of photography.

6. “The Weather Book” (Robert FitzRoy, London/at sea, 1859): The Captain of Darwin’s Beagle voyage and pioneer of the weather forecast attempts to make sense of a devastating storm while facing public scrutiny and the pressure of faith and evolutionary ideas.

7. “Gutta Percha” (Telegraph workers, Karachi, 1865): In the rush to expand telegraph systems as the arm of the British Empire, workers grapple with loyalties while harvesting the necessary natural resin used as electrical insulator.

8. “Two Bodies in Flight” (The Aerial Experiment Association, Ontario/Nova Scotia, 1909): Two of Alexander Graham Bell’s young protégés attempt the first two-man flight in Canada, while trying to resolve complicated feelings about their friendship and loss of youthful innocence. “Two Bodies in Flight” appears in the January 2025 issue of The New Quarterly.

9. “A Nobel Party” (German atomic physicists, Farm Hall, UK, 1945): German scientists thought to be involved with the Nazi nuclear program are held in a bugged English country house, where they hear news of the bombings in Japan.

10. “Seasons of Bird Song” (Aretas Saunders, Connecticut, 1943): Epistolary. An aging naturalist and teacher writes to beloved students fighting across different battlefields while developing a new language to transcribe birdsong, weighing the value of a life lived quietly vs. one of action.

11. “Feeding Habits of the Freshwater Garpike” (Sri Lanka, 1970): A young woman researches the habits of a new species while navigating an increasingly messy relationship with a superior.

12. “Forward, Backward” (Speculative climate-fiction): In a near-future, researchers have created isolated communities recreating the technology and lifestyle of different periods of history, searching for the optimal balance of carbon consumption and quality-of-life. A mother attempts to get antibiotics for her daughter. “Forward, Backward” appeared in Nature (2023).

PRAISE FOR NAYANI JENSEN

“‘Like Rabbits’ is historical fiction at its most intimate and convincing. This story beautifully harks back to the Golden Age of Dutch science, a time when men played gods. As one such man attempts to conceive with his wife, he seeks credit for his ground-breaking discoveries at great personal cost — only to face tragedy and his own mortality. With elegance, authority, and vitality, Nayani Jensen gives us a timeless story of ambition and a tender portrait of a marriage.” — JURY CITATION, 2024 Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers