“The world is ending right now…” warned Paul Lynch, celebrated Irish novelist and winner of the 2023 Booker Prize for his dystopian novel Prophet Song, on the opening day of the Jaipur Literature Festival 2024. This was a theme running through India’s premier literary fete this year, as American author Kai Bird gave interview after interview, explaining the life and misery of J Robert Oppenheimer, the US scientist behind the atomic bomb whose biography has witnessed a surge of interest following the blockbuster success of last year’s Christopher Nolan film based on it.