Simon

The Genius in My Basement

By: Alexander Masters

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Paperback | 21 June 2012

At a Glance

Paperback
368 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
19.8 x 12.9 x 2.4

Paperback

$37.75

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An intimate portrait of an everyday genius

Alexander Masters tripped over his first subject on a Cambridge pavement, and the result was the multi-award-winning bestseller Stuart: A Life Backwards. The second, he's found under his floorboards.

One of the greatest mathematical prodigies of the twentieth century stomps around the basement in semi-darkness, dodging between stalagmites of bus timetables and engorged plastic bags. He eats tinned kippers stirred into packets of Bombay Mix. Simon is exploring a theoretical puzzle so complex and critical to our understanding of the universe, that it is known as the Monster. It looks like a sudoku table - except a sudoku table has nine columns of numbers.

The Monster has 808017424794512875886459904961710757005754368000000000.

But Simon's also up to something else. What's inside the decaying sports bag he never lets out of his clutches? Why does he hurtle out of the house in the middle of the night? And - Good God! - what is that noxious smell that creeps up the stairwell?

The Genius in my Basement is the grumpy, poignant, comical story - more intimate than either the author or his subject intended - about the frailty of brilliance, Britain's most uncooperative egghead, and a happy man.

Industry Reviews

`Masters has managed to convey something of the beauty and mystery not just of mathematics but of the human spirit' Sunday Telegraph

`Pick of the Paperbacks' in the Sunday Times; `Astonishingly good... gloriously funny and surprising'

`This book is a complete success ... By the end we have come just about to love [Simon]' Evening Standard

`Astonishingly good ... a glorious book: funny, surprising and completely sui generis' Sunday Times

`A wonderful book which shows you don't have to be `normal' to be happy.' Daily Mail

`New and open and risky and humane ... much is delightful - the bloggy, scrapbooky aspect, the kipple and backchat and disgusting food... ' Guardian

`Wholly original' Mail on Sunday, Book of the Week

`Exuberant and compelling...This is both a happy and funny book. It is decorated with Masters' elegant cartoons and his language is lyrical' FT

`An absorbing read, with Masters' deft pen and idiosyncratic style once again in evidence' The Times, Book of the Week

`A comically tender portrait' Observer, Book of the Week

`A wonderful book which shows you don't have to be `normal' to be happy' Daily Mail

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