Simon: The Genius in My Basement - Hardcover

Masters, Alexander

3.52

407 ratings by Goodreads

9780385341080: Simon: The Genius in My Basement

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385341083 ISBN 13: 9780385341080

Publisher: Delacorte Press, 2012

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Alexander Masters tripped over his first book subject on a Cambridge sidewalk, and the result was the multi-award-winning bestseller Stuart: A Life Backwards. His second, he’s found under his floorboards.

One of the greatest mathematical prodigies of the twentieth century, Simon Norton stomps around Alexander’s basement in semidarkness, dodging between stalagmites of bus timetables and engorged plastic bags, eating tinned kippers stirred into packets of Bombay mix. Simon is exploring a theoretical puzzle so complex and critical to our understanding of the universe that it is known as the Monster. It looks like a sudoku table—except a sudoku table has nine columns of numbers.

The Monster has 808017424794512875886459904961710757005754368000000000 columns.

But that’s not the whole story. What’s inside the decaying sports bag he never lets out of his clutches? Why does he hurtle out of the house in the middle of the night? And—good God!—what is that noxious smell that creeps up the stairwell?

Grumpy, poignant, comical—more intimate than either the author or his quarry intended—Simon: The Genius in My Basement is the story of a friendship and a pursuit. Part biography, part memoir, and part popular science, it is a study of the frailty of brilliance, the measures of happiness, and Britain’s most uncooperative egghead eccentric.

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Review:

‘Masters has managed to convey something of the beauty and mystery not just of mathematics but of the human spirit’ Sunday Telegraph

‘Pick of the Paperbacks’ in the Sunday Times; ‘Astonishingly good… gloriously funny and surprising’

‘This book is a complete success … By the end we have come just about to love [Simon]’ Evening Standard

‘Astonishingly good … a glorious book: funny, surprising and completely sui generis’ Sunday Times

‘A wonderful book which shows you don’t have to be ‘normal’ to be happy.’ Daily Mail

‘New and open and risky and humane … much is delightful – the bloggy, scrapbooky aspect, the kipple and backchat and disgusting food… ’ Guardian

‘Wholly original’ Mail on Sunday, Book of the Week

‘Exuberant and compelling…This is both a happy and funny book. It is decorated with Masters’ elegant cartoons and his language is lyrical’ FT

‘An absorbing read, with Masters’ deft pen and idiosyncratic style once again in evidence’ The Times, Book of the Week

‘A comically tender portrait’ Observer, Book of the Week

‘A wonderful book which shows you don’t have to be ‘normal’ to be happy’ Daily Mail

About the Author:

Alexander Masters studied physics and mathematics in London and Cambridge. For five years he worked in hostels for the homeless and ran a street newspaper. He has also worked as a newspaper columnist, a travel writer, an illustrator, and a bedspread salesman.

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