Apostolos Doxiadis

Sophie Ratcliffe – The Times

“GREAT LOVES are often born of loneliness”, and this, the narrator concludes, is the case with his uncle’s affair with numbers. Petros has spent a lifetime searching for Goldbach’s Conjecture — one of the last remaining famous mathematical conundrums — and the story of his calculations provides a fascinating examination of obsession. The tale has all the ingredients of a good detective story, but the heart of the book touches on things that don’t add up. Maths aside, this is a fable about those human feelings that are beyond both proof and imagination. As such, it is rich enough to charm the most innumerate of readers.

March 3, 2001: Sophie Ratcliffe – The Times

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