Synopses & Reviews
A stunning debut novel about the intertwined destinies of two friends brought together by childhood tragedy.
A three-million-copy Italian bestseller and winner of that country's prestigious Premio Strega award.
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, too, move on their own axis, 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 recognizes a kindred, tortured 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 intertwined: they are divisible only by themselves and each other. But the shadow of the lost twin haunts their relationship, until a chance sighting by Alice 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? And when Mattia is asked to choose between human love and his professional love — of mathematics — which will make him more complete?
Review
"A mesmerizing portrait of a young man and woman whose injured natures draw them together over the years and inevitably pull them apart. Mr. Giordano remarkably and movingly portrays the hesitant groping toward warmth that works beneath the pair's emotional disabilities. The author works with piercing subtlety. An exquisite rendering of what one might call feelings at the subatomic level."
-Richard Eder for The New York Times
"The melancholy that hangs over The Solitude of Prime Numbers is seductive and unnerving. A-."
-Entertainment Weekly
"Giordano's passionate evocation of being young and in despair will resonate strongly with readers."
-USA Today
"The elegant and fiercely intelligent debut novel by 27-year-old physicist Paolo Giordano, The Solitude of Prime Numbers revolves around Mattia and Alice, friends since high school-'twin primes, alone and lost, close but not close enough to really touch each other,' wherein resides the seductive enchantment of this singular love story."
-Elle
"This compelling debut shows a remarkable sensitivity and maturity in the depiction of its damaged soulmates. A fragile, unconventional love story by a talent to watch."
-Kirkus
"A deeply touching debut. Beautiful and affecting...it reads easily, due in party to the almost seamless translation. An intimate psychological portrait of two 'prime numbers'-together alone and alone together."
-Booklist
"Surprising, intimate and deeply moving, The Solitude of Prime Numbers takes the readers on a hypnotic journey through an unexpected love affair. Paolo Giordano writes with grace and elegance of gentle but damaged characters, using inventive language to create a story unlike anything in recent fiction. This is everything a debut novel should be and leaves one longing for the books that will follow."
-John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
"Paul Giordano is an expert on loss and sorrow. He understands and reveals the hidden hollows of the heart. His story is a quiet one, but his strong writing and unforgettable characters make his book a page turner. The Solitude of Prime Numbers is sad, dark and perfect."
-Mary Pipher, author of Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World
"What a shock to open a novel written by a young physicist in Italy and find myself there, on every page. No wonder Giordano's readers can be counted in the millions; this astute, aching contemplation of solitude has a power to make us all feel a little less alone. A love story told with astonishing perceptiveness and remarkable subtlety, The Solitude of Prime Numbers is an extraordinary affirmation of the reasons we read."
-Stefan Merrill Block, author of The Story of Forgetting
Review
“An engaging debut.”
Review
“Readers will devour this richly detailed, sensual bildungsroman.”
Review
“A beach read for strong-willed, independent souls.”
Review
“Powerful. As trenchant as it is true.”
Review
“A galvanizing social novel, spacious and strenuous, like a film that would have been cosigned by Ken Loach and Gus Van Sant.”
Review
“Characters unlike any you’ll find in Italian literature nowadays.”
Review
“A book that skims close to the realm of the epic in its description of the desperate and empty lust for life of a tribe of young people and the small and vast tragedies that emerge from their struggles.”
Review
“A novel capable of holding together—in the drift or in the tragedy of many lives—the thread of a hope that springs from two young lives that may be destined to fit together.”
Review
“Silvia Avallone has a gift for painting a believable picture of not only her two leading characters, but of a crowd of actors: grief-stricken women, lazy factory workers, brutish thugs who frequent lap-dancing bars, young girls and boys who want to make the world their own. . . . Something verging on the operatic elegantly fills the pages of this remarkable novel.”
Review
“With Silvia Avallone, we are in the presence of a natural, original, and untutored talent, capable of capturing the contradictions of her own time in a rebellious, heartbreaking way. But the greatness of this book, at once carnal and chaste [...] lies in the powerful way that it identifies beauty and friendship as the two decisive, all-encompassing emotions of adolescence. It is a book that demands love, in its truthfulness, in its refusal to turn away from the life-giving breath of poetry.”
Review
“Avallone skillfully tugs every thread in her tapestry with an artist’s hand. . . . This Avallone is a force of nature, with her exacting, precise prose, as in the spectacular opening passages.”
Review
“Following in the footsteps of the great tradition of a Tuscan and European author like Romano Bilenchi.”
Review
“Swimming to Elba is intelligent and well written. It deserves its success: Silvia Avallone gives us a penetrating vision of the way the new proletariat lives. She narrates that story very well. I was reminded of Tuscan authors such as Carlo Cassola and Vasco Pratolini. She is a modern writer, but you can sense those roots.”
Review
“From this first novel, she might one day write a novel that is to literature what Bernardo Bertolucci’s Novecento was for film.”
Review
“A masterpiece of fine writing, literature in its purest state, as if the words had flowed like molten steel out of the blast furnace, to recount perfect characters and a magnificent story.”
Review
Selected praise for Paolo Giordanos THE SOLITUDE OF PRIME NUMBERS:
“Mesmerizing . . . [Giordano] works with piercing subtlety. An exquisite rendering of what one might call feelings at the subatomic level.”
—The New York Times
“The story—the explanation, really—of how two people come to find solitude more comforting than companionship is the subtle work of Giordanos haunting novel, a finely tuned machine powered by the perverse mechanics of need.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Seductive and unnerving.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“The elegant and fiercely intelligent debut novel by 27-year-old physicist Paolo Giordano, The Solitude of Prime Numbers revolves around Mattia and Alice, friends since high school—‘twin primes, alone and lost, close but not close enough to really touch each other, wherein resides the seductive enchantment of this singular love story.”
—Elle
“Giordanos passionate evocation of being young and in despair will resonate strongly with readers.”
—USA Today
“Elegant.”
—Los Angeles Times
Review
“
The Human Body is a great novel of life in wartime: a chronicle of war's multifarious crimes against the body and soul, and a heartfelt meditation on how men, together and collectively, repair the burdens of their fate.”
—Joshua Ferris, author of To Rise Again at a Decent Hour
"Paolo Giordano's new novel, like his last, is full of sensitivity and intelligence. The Human Body is a brilliant addition to the literature of our modern wars."
—Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds
“With an extraordinarily keen eye and a pitch-perfect ear, Giordano has magnificently captured the surreal existence of the modern soldier. By turn poignant and gripping - when not downright hilarious - every page of The Human Body rings with an authenticity and appreciation of the absurd that very few novelists writing about men stumbling about the business of war have achieved. Very few indeed; think of OBriens Going After Cacciato or Hellers Catch-22, because Giordano is just that good.”
—Scott Anderson, author of Lawrence in Arabia
“Paolo Giordano has written his generations war novel. Tender, cruel, beautiful, heartless, a brilliant story of desire and youth and death in Afghanistan. Readers of Kevin Powers have been searching for another modern classic, and The Human Body is it.”
—Andrew Sean Greer, author of The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells
“Giordano follows THE SOLITUDE OF PRIME NUMBERS with a stunning exploration of war. Giordano makes the tedium of combat fascinating with his well-drawn characters. The first page indicates that the platoons experience was particularly horrible... but the fact that the mission runs off the rails is almost secondary to the beauty, texture, and acuity with which Giordano captures the day-to-day routines of the soldiers, and their efforts to make sense of both their lives in Italy and their military assignment.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The Human Body is a memorable entry in the literature of the Afghan war, the characters crisply drawn and the writing full of telling details.”
—Booklist
“Despite the tragic events, this is a very entertaining novel, with the characters innate and passionate sense of the absurdity of their situation, and of life itself, evident in every scene. The fast-paced, present-tense narrative seems to have been translated accurately to capture the nuances of emotion and drama conveyed by the highly intelligent and perceptive Giordano.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“Giordanos (The Solitude of Prime Numbers, 2010) unorthodox Afghanistan war novel is short on action but rich in psychological insight.... As the title suggests, the book is less about military heroism than the devastating human impact of combat. Well-observed and compassionate, this is a memorable look at imperfect people in extreme circumstances.”—Kirkus
Selected praise for Paolo Giordanos THE SOLITUDE OF PRIME NUMBERS:
“Mesmerizing . . . [Giordano] works with piercing subtlety. An exquisite rendering of what one might call feelings at the subatomic level.”
—The New York Times
“The story—the explanation, really—of how two people come to find solitude more comforting than companionship is the subtle work of Giordanos haunting novel, a finely tuned machine powered by the perverse mechanics of need.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Seductive and unnerving.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“The elegant and fiercely intelligent debut novel by 27-year-old physicist Paolo Giordano, The Solitude of Prime Numbers revolves around Mattia and Alice, friends since high school—‘twin primes, alone and lost, close but not close enough to really touch each other, wherein resides the seductive enchantment of this singular love story.”
—Elle
“Giordanos passionate evocation of being young and in despair will resonate strongly with readers.”
—USA Today
“Elegant.”
—Los Angeles Times
Review
"Don't be misled by the title; this engaging coming-of-age tale has little to do with either Auguste Rodin or a debutante. Instead it begins early in the 20th century with Tommy Ogden, a rich, enigmatic Chicagoan who drunkenly decides one day to endow a boys' prep school. Flash forward a few decades to Lee Goodell, who attends Ogden Hall School for Boys and privately wants to become a sculptor. We follow his life, witnessing the two acts of violence that change him.
Rodin's Debutante is a surprising story, never going where you expect it to, and Just's spare prose packs a solid emotional punch. A-" -
Entertainment Weekly
"To his immense credit, Just doesnt turn this into a whodunit—in fact, we never learn who committed the crimes—but is instead focused on the intricate, almost Jamesian unfolding of the personal and private lives of his sharply delineated characters. An understated and delicate offering by a master."--Kirkus Reviews
"Just extends his grand inquiry into family, honor, and injustice in his beguiling and unnerving seventeenth novel. Like An Unfinished Season (2004), this bildungsroman is set on Just's home ground, northern Illinois, where Tommy Ogden, a man of enormous inherited wealth, flagrant taciturnity, and an excessive avidity for shooting animals, turns his massive prairie mansion into an ill-conceived boys' school at the onset of WWI. Lee Goodell, the son of a judge, grows up in a nearby small town, a bucolic place until the Great Depression delivers tramps and a horrific sex crime. Lee, dreamy, kind, and willful, attends Ogden's school, then headed by a Melville fanatic, where he plays football and swoons over a sculpted bust by Rodin. Determined to become a sculptor, Lee rents a basement studio on Chicago's South Side, where a knife attack jeopardizes his artistic vocation and involves him in the lives of his poor, struggling neighbors and the mission of a compassionate African American doctor. Stealthily meshing the gothic with the modern, the feral with the civilized, in this mordantly funny yet profoundly mysterious novel, Just asks what divides and what unites us. What should be kept secret? Which teaches us more, failure or success? And of what value is beauty? HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Award-winning Just attracts more readers with each uniquely compelling novel."--Booklist, STARRED review
Synopsis
A prime number can only be divided by itself or by one — it never truly fits with another. Alice and Mattia, both primes, recognize in each other a kindred spirit. When a chance occurrence reunites them after years apart, a lifetime of concealed emotions are forced to the surface.
Synopsis
Tommy Ogden, a Gatsbyesque character living in a mansion outside robber-baron-era Chicago, declines to give his wife the money to commission a bust of herself from the French master Rodin and announces instead his intention to endow a boys’ school. Ogden’s decision reverberates years later in the life of Lee Goodell, whose coming of age is at the heart of Ward Just’s emotionally potent new novel.
Lee’s life decisions—to become a sculptor, to sojourn in the mean streets of the South Side, to marry into the haute-intellectual culture of Hyde Park—play out against the crude glamour of midcentury Chicago. Just’s signature skill of conveying emotional heft with few words is put into play as Lee confronts the meaning of his four years at Ogden Hall School under the purview, in the school library, of a bust known as Rodin’s Debutante. And, especially, as he meets again a childhood friend, the victim of a brutal sexual assault of which she has no memory. It was a crime marking the end of Lee’s boyhood and the beginning of his understanding—so powerfully under the surface of Just’s masterly story—that how and what we remember add up to nothing less than our very lives.
Synopsis
A bestselling international literary sensation about whether a "prime number" can ever truly connect with someone else A prime number can only be divided by itself or by one—it never truly fits with another. Alice and Mattia, both "primes," are misfits who seem destined to be alone. Haunted by childhood tragedies that mark their lives, they cannot reach out to anyone else. When Alice and Mattia meet as teenagers, they recognize in each other a kindred, damaged spirit.
But the mathematically gifted Mattia accepts a research position that takes him thousands of miles away, and the two are forced to separate. Then a chance occurrence reunites them and forces a lifetime of concealed emotion to the surface.
Like Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, this is a stunning meditation on loneliness, love, and the weight of childhood experience that is set to become a universal classic.
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Synopsis
"Mesmerizing...an exquisite rendering of what one might call feels at the subatomic level." -The New York Times A prime number is a lonely thing. It can only be divided by itself or by one, and it never truly fits with another. Alice and Mattia are both "primes"-misfits haunted by early tragedies. When the two meet as teenagers, they recognize in each other a kindred, damaged spirit. Years later, a chance encounter reunites them and forces a lifetime of concealed emotion to the surface. But can two prime numbers ever find a way to be together? A brilliantly conceived and elegantly written debut novel, The Solitude of Prime Numbers is a stunning meditation on loneliness, love, and what it means to be human.
Synopsis
The provocative international bestseller about two young girls growing up fast in a failing industrial town on the coast of Italy They were always a pair: daring, intelligent Anna and breathtakingly gorgeous Francesca. Just shy of fourteen, their newly acquired curves and skimpy bathing suits have earned them celebrity status on the beaches of their gritty town, where the glittering resort island of Elba taunts them from across the bay. The girls, aware of their newfound power, are on the brink of everything—high school, adulthood, ambition—but when their intense friendship suffers a blow, each sets off on her own, only to learn that the "glamorous" world of adult physicality can be at best banal and at worst dehumanizing. As their choices take them to a painful crossroads, the girls must reconnect if they have any hope of escaping their small-town destinies. Frank, sensual, and evocative of the Academy Award–winning film
Cinema Paradiso and the international bestseller
The Solitude of Prime Numbers,
Swimming to Elba is a harrowing yet redemptive meditation on politics, family, sex, and the lasting power of friendship.
Synopsis
The provocative international bestseller about two young girls growing up fast in a failing industrial town on the coast of Italy They were always a pair: daring, intelligent Anna and breathtakingly gorgeous Francesca. Just shy of fourteen, their newly acquired curves and skimpy bathing suits have earned them celebrity status on the beaches of their gritty town, where the glittering resort island of Elba taunts them from across the bay. The girls, aware of their newfound power, are on the brink of everything—high school, adulthood, ambition—but when their intense friendship suffers a blow, each sets off on her own, only to learn that the "glamorous" world of adult physicality can be at best banal and at worst dehumanizing. As their choices take them to a painful crossroads, the girls must reconnect if they have any hope of escaping their small-town destinies. Frank, sensual, and evocative of the Academy Award–winning film
Cinema Paradiso and the international bestseller
The Solitude of Prime Numbers,
Swimming to Elba is a harrowing yet redemptive meditation on politics, family, sex, and the lasting power of friendship.
Synopsis
From the bestselling author of The Solitude of Prime Numbers, a searing novel of war and the journey from youth into manhood
In Paolo Giordanos highly awaited new novel, a platoon of young men and one woman soldier leaves Italy for one of the most dangerous places on earth. Forward Operating Base (FOB) in the Gulistan district of Afghanistan is nothing but an exposed sandpit scorched by inescapable sunlight and deadly mortar fire.
Each member in the platoon manages the toxic mix of boredom and fear that is life at the FOB in his own way. Brash Cederna shamelessly picks on the virgin Ietri. Giulia Zampieri seemingly navigates this male-dominated world with easeuntil two male comrades start vying for her attention. And for medical officer Alessandro Egitto, the FOB serves as an escape from a real life even more dangerous than one fought with guns. At night, lying on their beds, they feel the beat of their own hearts,
the ceaseless activity of the human body. But when a much-debated mission goes devastatingly awry, the soldiers find their lives changed in an instant.
A heartrending, redemptive story about brotherhood and family, modern war and the wars we wage with ourselves, Paolo Giordanos visceral novel reminds us what it is to be human.
Synopsis
A finely observed coming-of-age novel, set in Chicago, with a boarding school for boys and a never-solved sexual crime at its center, from the National Book Award finalist Ward Just.
About the Author
Silvia Avallone is a poet and novelist who was born in Biella, Italy, in 1984 and now lives in Bologna.
Swimming to Elba, published in Italy as
Acciaio, is her first novel.
Antony Shugaar’s recent translations include A Pimp’s Notes by Giorgio Faletti, Bandit Love by Massimo Carlotto, and Sandokan by Nanni Balestini. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.