The Tenth Muse - Softcover

Chung, Catherine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1408709570 ISBN 13: 9781408709573

Publisher: Little, Brown, 2019

Synopsis

The first thing I remember being said of me with any consistency was that I was intelligent - and I recognized even then that it was a comment leveled at me with as much disapproval as admiration. Still, I never tried to hide or suppress my mind as some girls do, and thank god, because that would have been the beginning of the end.

From childhood, Katherine knows she is different, and that her parents are not who they seem to be. But in becoming a mathematician, she faces the most human of problems - who is she? What is the cost of love, and what is the cost of ambition?

On her quest to conquer the Riemann Hypothesis, the greatest unsolved mathematical problem of her time, she turns to a theorem with a mysterious history that holds both the lock and key to her identity, and to secrets long buried during World War II. Forced to confront some of the biggest events of the twentieth century and rethink everything she knows of herself, Katherine strives to take her place in the world of higher mathematics, reclaiming the voices of the women who came before her whose love of the language of numbers connects them across generations.

The Tenth Muse is a brilliant, involving novel asking questions about who gets to tell the story of intellectual endeavour, and those who lost everything during World War II.

Praise for The Tenth Muse
'Arresting in scope and its treatment of time, its prose at turns crystalline and richly balletic, this story pulls puzzle from puzzle - human, historical and all too contemporary' Helen Oyeyemi

About this title

Review:

A RECOMMENDED BOOK FROM:
Los Angeles Times * USA Today * O, the Oprah Magazine * Buzzfeed * The Rumpus * Entertainment Weekly * Elle * BBC * Christian Science Monitor * Electric Literature * The Millions * LitHub * Publishers Weekly * Kirkus * Refinery29 * Thrillist * BookBub * Nylon * Bustle * Goodreads

The cliché that boys are better at math collapses before the diamond-hard mind of a grad student whose relentless attempt to prove a legendary hypothesis exposes a deeper algorithm about herself....Chung spins her captivating novel from stories of actual women who, in her words, "posed as schoolboys, married tutors, and moved across continents, all to study and excel at mathematics (O, the Oprah Magazine)

A page-turning intellectual thriller, a family romance, an alternative history of twentieth-century math - I couldn't put it down (Elif Batuman)

The Tenth Muse is as ambitious and intriguing as the complex math problems Katherine, the protagonist of this remarkable novel, aims to solve. In this novel -the scope of which is staggering - Chung has crafted a story that is moving, elegant and richly written. Her prose, as it unfolds, becomes an elusive equation readers will yearn to solve (Roxane Gay)

Ambitious, mesmerizing, and immersive, The Tenth Muse gives us a character we'd follow anywhere, and journeys well worth following her on. This novel dazzles (Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers)

Catherine Chung has written a deft, spellbinding emotional puzzle-box of a book, rich and intricately layered. The Tenth Muse slowly, carefully builds to turn your every expectation on its head, and reading it feels like a glimpse of what mathematics might be in the eyes of its ablest practitioners--both secret and sublime (Téa Obreht)

The Tenth Muse is a must-read. This beautiful, captivating novel has it all: A riveting family secret; a heroine ahead of her time; and a brilliant historical narrative that sheds light on the way we live now (J. Courtney Sullivan, author of Saints for All Occasions)

A sweeping tale of betrayal, legacy, brilliant women and WWII (USA Today)

Two great enigmas form the center of this elegant novel, in which a brilliant mathematician attempts to solve the impenetrable Riemann hypothesis and learn the truth of her family history. Katherine is the daughter of an American G.I. and a Chinese immigrant who disappears when Katherine is a girl. During her childhood, in the nineteen-fifties, in Michigan, her intelligence and mixed heritage alienate many people, and lead her to wonder 'in each situation whether this time it was my femaleness or my Asianness or the combination of both that branded me different'...In the novel's portrait of her perseverance, it pays moving homage to all the 'unhailed, unnamed' women in history whose talents were dismissed (New Yorker)

The Tenth Muse centers on Katherine, an aspiring mathematician whose studies take her deep into her family history, and a legacy of genius and empowerment which probes compelling questions about her identity (Entertainment Weekly)

Book Description:

A brilliant and gripping novel about a young woman's gift for mathematics, and the secret of her past bound up in World War II.

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1408709570
• ISBN 13: 9781408709573
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304