Paolo Gioradano's debut novel has sold over a million copies around the world and earned him Italy's premier literary prize, the Premio Strega. Now, finally, we've earned our taste of his celebrated book here in the states. The Solitude of Prime Numbers is a book of striking beauty and disturbing content, including anorexia, cutting, loneliness and guilt. It's a coming-of-age story in the most awkward and lovely tradition, and its two protagonists are destined to win hearts here just as easily as they have abroad.
Giordano is a young author - only 27 - and his acclaim is all the more impressive given that he's a physicist by trade. He'll be here in conversation with his editor and now head of her own eponymous imprint, Pamela Dorman.
News of Note
Staff Picks
The Golden Spruce
Written by David
By John Vaillant (W.W. Norton, $15.95)
I had no idea this would be such an engrossing, eye-opening, and entertaining book. Set in Canada's Queen Charlotte Islands, John Vaillant's Golden Spruce is the story of Grant Hadwin, a logger turned environmentalist, whose passion and zeal brought him to cut down a one-of-a-kind, over 300 year-old, golden Sitka Spruce. It's a gripping and well-written narrative set in a landscape of mythic proportions.
One Fifth Avenue
Written by Cheryl
Candace Bushnell (Voice, $15.99)
Tired of those 800 page tomes in translation? Cross-eyed after reading Nabakov's original manuscript of his long-lost Laura? Or simply exhausted after schlepping around those encyclopedically depressing accounts of colossal financial institutions too big to fail? This book is a true guilty pleasure. Bushnell is Hedda Hopper with a modern twist and possesses enough self-awareness to mock the clueless Sex and the City ravers that she,alone, spawned. Give yourself a break. It's always the silly season.
The Big Clock
Written by David
By Kenneth Fearing (NYRB, $14.95)
Raymond Chandler was right when he claimed this guy could give him a run for his money. Besides the noir setting that he gets so right and makes so palpabale, Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock is an exceptionally suspenseful story of cat and mouse. Fortunately, it isn't a long one--otherwise it'd keep you up all night.
I had no idea this would be such an engrossing, eye-opening, and entertaining book. Set in Canada's Queen Charlotte Islands, John Vaillant's Golden Spruce is the story of Grant Hadwin, a logger turned environmentalist, whose passion and zeal brought him to cut down a one-of-a-kind, over 300 year-old, golden Sitka Spruce. It's a gripping and well-written narrative set in a landscape of mythic proportions.
Tired of those 800 page tomes in translation? Cross-eyed after reading Nabakov's original manuscript of his long-lost Laura? Or simply exhausted after schlepping around those encyclopedically depressing accounts of colossal financial institutions too big to fail? This book is a true guilty pleasure. Bushnell is Hedda Hopper with a modern twist and possesses enough self-awareness to mock the clueless Sex and the City ravers that she,alone, spawned. Give yourself a break. It's always the silly season.
Raymond Chandler was right when he claimed this guy could give him a run for his money. Besides the noir setting that he gets so right and makes so palpabale, Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock is an exceptionally suspenseful story of cat and mouse. Fortunately, it isn't a long one--otherwise it'd keep you up all night.