Synopses & Reviews
In the aftermath of two seemingly unconnected events in 1969, a mathematical genius, a trafficker, and a performance artist find themselves haunted by a malevolent being whose ubiquitous existence reveals numerical relationships between some of the world's most significant developments. Original.
Synopsis
The Weight of Numbers describes the metamorphosis of three people: Anthony Burden, a mathematical genius destroyed by the beauty of numbers; Saul Cogan, transformed from prankster idealist to trafficker in the poor and dispossessed; and Stacey Chavez, ex-teenage celebrity and mediocre performance artist, hungry for fame and starved of love. All are haunted by Nick Jinks, a malevolent curse of a man who seems to be everywhere at once. As a grid of connections emerge between a dusty philosophical society in London and an African revolution, between international container shipping and celebrity-hosted exposés on the problems of the Third Worldthis novel sends the specters of the Baby Booms liberal revolutions floating into the unreal estate of globalization and media overloadwith a deadly payoff.The Weight of Numbers is an artful and deadly novel that traces the secret histories and paranoid fantasies of our culture into a future globalized in ways both liberating and hideous, full of information and empty of meaning. Simon Ings has delivered a storytelling tour de force that will alter some of your most cherished beliefs.