James Watt: The Hungry Engine

A man of 37 drags a measuring chain through the mud of the mountains in the rain. A few days away, in a cottage behind a big house, stands an engine he built with his own hands, silent and rusting. In the evening he writes to a friend: nothing is more foolish than inventing.

This is a novel, not a biography. It starts with a sickly boy in a town by the sea, lifting the lid of a kettle and asking where the steam goes. It follows him as an instrument maker in a small room at the edge of the university, then on a walk in a park where an idea comes to him in a minute, and then through 11 years of failure and debt until his engine works in front of people. The events, dates and names are real, and the story is told in scenes and dialogue as if you were watching it.

The science is explained with pictures from the kitchen: a kettle, a boiling pot, a cold plate held over steam, a bottle stopper. No equations and no difficult terms. A final section tells you clearly what is real and what is imagined in every chapter.

The book is written in Arabic.