We live a miracle everyday, a world of coloured reflections in a river, scents of flowers, birdsong, a warm breeze. Buried below our living experience, science has discovered a world of atoms and vibrations, a world of blind elementary forces. These forces operate everywhere in the known universe, including the chemistry of our bodies. Most poignantly they operate in our brains. How does the miracle of our conscious life emerge from this dry world of atomic forces? Should we expect science to give a satisfactory answer to this question? Practical developments such as genetic engineering and...

Goli Otok is a naked island off the coast of Croatia that served as a penal colony for political prisoners of Yugoslavia after World War II. Thousands were Partisan fighters against the German occupation caught on the Soviet side of the ideological split between Moscow and Belgrade in 1948. Many leaders of the pro-Soviet faction were slain trying to flee eastward. Other leaders and thousands of followers were imprisoned on Goli Otok. Many died there. Years later, Sergei Korneichuk, a Red Army intelligence agent is assigned to Belgrade under cover as a correspondent of Radio Moscow. His...