The Solitude of Prime Numbers

by Paolo Giordano

Shaun Whiteside (Translator)

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A prime number is inherently a solitary thing: it can only be divided by itself, or by one; it never truly fits with another. Alice and Mattia also move on their own axes, alone with their personal tragedies. As a child Alice's overbearing father drove her first to a terrible skiing accident, and then to anorexia. When she meets Mattia she recognises a kindred spirit, and Mattia reveals to Alice his terrible secret: that as a boy he abandoned his mentally-disabled twin sister in a park to go to a party, and when he returned, she was nowhere to be found.

These two irreversible episodes mark Alice and Mattia's lives for ever, and as they grow into adulthood their destinies seem irrevocably intertwined. But then a chance sighting of a woman who could be Mattia's sister forces a lifetime of secret emotion to the surface.

A meditation on loneliness and love, The Solitude of Prime Numbers asks, can we ever truly be whole when we're in love with another?

  • ISBN10 1409082385
  • ISBN13 9781409082385
  • Publish Date 6 October 2009 (first published 4 June 2009)
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country GB
  • Publisher Transworld Publishers Ltd
  • Imprint Transworld Digital
  • Format eBook (EPUB)
  • Pages 384
  • Language English