Oppenheimer: The award-winning book it's based on
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You may have heard about a certain Christopher Nolan film going head-to-head with the Barbie movie in cinemas from today (July 21).
Oppenheimer, starring Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Matt Damon and Robert Downey Jr, is the latest dark drama from the Tenet director, depicting the creation of the first atomic bomb and the real-life events that led up to it.
The film gets its name from influential figure J Robert Oppenheimer, considered the creator of the atomic weapon.
Nolan's screenplay was inspired by the 2005 biography on Oppenheimer co-written by authors and researchers Martin J Sherwin and Kai Bird.
Related: Oppenheimer is an unforgettable experience with a never-better Cillian Murphy
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer scooped the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography shortly after its publication, and the re-released paperback finds itself back in the bestseller charts amidst the Oppenheimer cinema release.
Oppenheimer was a leading scientist on the Manhattan Project, a code name for the US government research project formed to produce the atomic weapon during World War II.
Those wanting to learn more about the real-life protagonist will find Sherwin and Bird's non-fiction book a worthy read, packed full of information on his upbringing and education way before his work as director of the Los Alamos Laboratory.
Related: Cillian Murphy praises Oppenheimer's sex scenes with Florence Pugh
It's no surprise to learn that Christopher Nolan is a fan, who has described the book as "a riveting account of one of history’s most essential and paradoxical figures".
"Physicist and polymath, as familiar with Hindu scriptures as he was with quantum mechanics, J. Robert Oppenheimer – director of the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb – was the most famous scientist of his generation," reads the book's synopsis on Amazon.
"In their meticulous and riveting biography, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin reveal a brilliant, ambitious, complex and flawed man, profoundly involved with some of the momentous events of the twentieth century."
The page-turner is available in Kindle Edition too or as an audiobook with an Audible subscription. Bearing a 4.6 star rating based on 2,438 reviews, it's proved to be a book that's resonated with readers.
Oppenheimer is in cinemas now.
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