ONCE UPON A PRIME

A hugely entertaining and well written tour of the links between maths and literature by an author with a lightness of touch and passion for both subjects and with a knack to educate, amuse and surprise. Did you know for instance that Moby-Dick is full of sophisticated geometry? That James Joyce's stream-of-consciousness novels are deliberately checkered with mathematical references? That George Eliot was obsessed with statistics? That Jurassic Park is undergirded by fractal patterns? That Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote in mathematician characters? From sonnets and fairytales to experimental French literature, the book takes us on an unforgettable journey through the books we thought we knew, revealing new layers of beauty and wonder. Insightful and often laugh-out-loud funny, it is a also wondrous quest to understand human life and our place in the universe. 290pp, paperback. Diagrams.