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
Ghosts
Written by Dustin
Monday, 15 June 2009
by Cesar Aira (New Directions, $12.95)
Cesar Aira doesn't write novels. No, he's perfected something new and brash -- small stories about small folks that are perfect in every detail but obviate those details in the telling. It's just a coincidence that these tales resemble the novel form at its best. Here, a Chilean family in Argentina, groceries and sweat and joy and enormous naked ghosts, all in such a slim book.
Cesar Aira doesn't write novels. No, he's perfected something new and brash -- small stories about small folks that are perfect in every detail but obviate those details in the telling. It's just a coincidence that these tales resemble the novel form at its best. Here, a Chilean family in Argentina, groceries and sweat and joy and enormous naked ghosts, all in such a slim book.