Events

Wed 4/13  7pm-8pm Paolo Giordano reads from the paperback release of his novel The Solitude of Prime Numbers Paolo Giordano was born in Turin in 1982. He is a PhD in theoretical physics. His debut novel, The Solitude of Prime Numbers, has been the most sold book of 2008 in Italy. It has received many awards, including the Premio Strega and the Premio Campiello Opera Prima. It is translated in more than 30 languages. The Solitude of Prime Numbers is a stunning meditation on loneliness, love and the weight of childhood experience. A sensation in its native Italy, where it has sold more than a million copies, it is a remarkable debut, a moving novel that lays bare the soul and captures what it means to be human. A prime number is a lonely thing. It can be divided only by itself or by one; it never truly fits with another. Alice and Mattia are both “primes” – misfits who seem destined to be alone. They are haunted by the childhood tragedies that mark their lives – a physical handicap due to a ski accident for Alice and the loss of the twin sister for Mattia – and find themselves unable to reach out to anyone else. When the two meet as teenagers, they recognize in each other a kindred, damaged spirit.   As they grow into adulthood, their destinies seem irrevocably intertwined. But when the mathematically gifted Mattia accepts a research position that takes him thousands of miles away the two are forced to separate with many things left unsaid. A chance encounter will reunite them and force a lifetime of concealed emotion to the surface, but the question remains: Can two prime numbers ever find a way to be together? Author photo by S. Mottura “An exquisite rendering of what one might call feelings at the subatomic level.” The New York Times “Moving… masterful… elegantly discreet.” Times Literary Supplement “A delicately nuanced meditation on the nature of loneliness. A stunning achievement.” Daily Mail “Very accomplished… a melancholic, but strangely beautiful, read…” The Guardian