The Reading Bud

Welcome to the TRB Lounge. Today, we are featuring author Mir Seidel for her latest release, Tesla’s Opera: The real, stranger-than-fiction Nikola Tesla.

Book: Tesla’s Opera: The real, stranger-than-fiction Nikola Tesla
Author: Mir Seidel
Publication Date: September 2, 2025
Publisher: Fomite Press
Genres: Non-fiction, Crossovers Opera & Biography
Available in: Paperback
For Readers Who Enjoyed Reading: The Prestige by Christopher Priest, The Current War by Adam Cline, The Three Ghosts of Tesla by Richard Marazano (graphic novel)

About the Book

Tesla’s Opera: The Real, Stranger-Than-Fiction Nikola Tesla brings the visionary inventor Nikola Tesla to life through the opera he inspired, Violet Fire. For its creators, only opera could encompass the extremes and surreal qualities of Tesla’s life and career: the visions he had from childhood, his inventions that helped create our wired and wireless world, even his unrealized ideas. Tesla moved in the heights of New York society, yet he never married, and gave his love to a white pigeon. 
With a score by minimalist composer Jon Gibson, libretto by Mir Seidel, and directed by Terry O’Reilly, Violet Fire had its world premiere in Serbia, Tesla’s homeland, on the 150th anniversary of his birth. Tesla’s Opera includes the full libretto, stunning photos from the performance, and haunting images from the continuous video projections, along with commentary by the opera’s  librettist, director, and conductor, critic Merilyn Jackson, and author/poet Andrei Codrescu. 
This book offers us the Tesla we need now—stranger than fiction, worthy of remembrance, and packed with meaning for our time. 

You can find Tesla’s Opera here:
Amazon | Goodreads | Barnes & Noble | Formite Press

What Others Are Saying

“In Tesla’s Opera, Mir Seidel has crafted an inspired and visually stunning tribute to one of history’s greatest minds. Through music, choreography, and imaginative staging, this colorful book celebrates Nikola Tesla’s life in a way that is both joyful and moving. To quote one of the book’s contributors, “Tesla could make you proud to be human”—and this creative homage does just that. Insightful, festive, and richly layered, Tesla’s Opera brings Tesla’s multifaceted brilliance to life with style, wit, and heart.”

—Marc J. Seifer, author of Wizard: The Life & Times of Nikola Tesla and Tesla: Wizard at War

“Whatever happens through the centuries about Tesla, misusing his name, copying his work, this will still never overshadow his genius and contribution to mankind.“

—Marina Abramovic, Serbian-American artist

“The book is immersive in tracking the history, mysteries and mystique of Nikola Tesla. This is a fascinating, fun book about the world of science, opera and avian love. Poet Andrei Codrescu even weighs in on the current currency of the Tesla name in his fiery intro to the book about a certain musky billionaire appropriating the Tesla name.”

—Lewis Whittington, Review of Tesla’s Opera in CultureVulture

About The Author

Mir Seidel

Mir Seidel’s latest book, Tesla’s Opera: the real, stranger-than-fiction Nikola Tesla (Fomite Press), considers the pioneering inventor through the opera about Tesla that she wrote the libretto for—a magic-realist retelling of Tesla’s life. The opera, Violet Fire, was performed in Belgrade, New York, and Philadelphia. Her novel, The Speed of Clouds, is out from New Door Books. Her writing has also appeared in places including Art in America, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Calyx, Bourbon Penn, and The New York Review of Science Fiction.

You can find author Seidel here:
Website | BlueSky | Instagram

If you are an author and wish to be featured as our guest or if you are a publicist and want to get your author featured on TRB, then please get in touch directly by e-mail at thereadingbud@gmail.com