The First Question

Adrian Vale has spent his life on one question: what came before. It started in a workshop, with a father who measured things that should not have been there, and a brass watch marked on the back. It followed him through a girl in a kitchen who wanted a different kind of answer, a company that taught machines to listen, and a room built to catch the moment before a choice. Maya stays. Noah grows. The work does not stop. Every time Adrian gets close, the thing in front of him is already later than it should be. The more carefully he looks, the less he can name a first cause — and the more the life around him asks to be lived anyway. The First Question is a novel about a man who cannot put a question down, the people who love him while he holds it, and the cost of needing a beginning.