Simon: The Genius in my Basement

(Paperback)

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Description

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, hes 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 Simons also up to something else. Whats 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, Britains most uncooperative egghead, and a happy man.

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 dont 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 compellingThis 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 dont have to be normal to be happy Daily Mail

Author Bio

Alexander Masters is an author and homeless worker. He is the author of Stuart: A Life Backwards and The Genius in My Basement. Stuart: a Life Backwards, was a Sunday Times bestseller and the winner of the Guardian First Book Award and Whitbread Book of the Year 2005 in the Biography category. He recently adapted Stuart: a Life Backwards for a BBC film. Alexander Masters lives in London.