Existence of God
A MacArthur Fellowship in 1996 led to the writing of "Properties of Light" (2000), a ghost story about love, betrayal, and quantum physics. Her most recent novel is "36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction" (2010), which explores ongoing controversies over religion and reason through the tale of a professor of psychology who has written an atheist best-seller, while his life is permeated with secular versions of religious themes such as messianism, divine genius, and the quest for immortality. The book has a long non-fiction appendix (attributed to the novel's protagonist) that details 36 traditional and modern arguments for the existence of God, together with their claimed refutations. National Public Radio chose it as one of its "five favorite books of 2010", and The Christian Science Monitor named it the best book of fiction of 2010.