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
Star Maker
Written by Dustin
Monday, 16 November 2009
By Olaf Stapledon (Wesleyan, $26.95)
New rule: you haven't read science fiction until you've read Stapledon. His prose is a little dated feeling, but his imagination, his passion for inventing strange worlds and strange peoples page after page, is unrivaled even now. Stapledon nearly exhausted the genre before it got started, and he deserves to be read long after it fades away.
New rule: you haven't read science fiction until you've read Stapledon. His prose is a little dated feeling, but his imagination, his passion for inventing strange worlds and strange peoples page after page, is unrivaled even now. Stapledon nearly exhausted the genre before it got started, and he deserves to be read long after it fades away.