An academic solves a fiendish maths problem but can’t solve the rest of his life in this murky novelDoubt battles with certainty throughout the engrossing seventh book from US novelist and short-story writer Ethan Canin,which explores the tortured mind of a mathematical genius and the blessing and burden of being gifted. whether you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, and as far as possible,all things,” wrote Descartes. Doubting makes Milo Andret an excellent mathematician, or adept at questioning received wisdom,but we read in horror as he becomes consumed by crippling self-doubt.
How effect you solve a problem like Malosz? That question keeps our obsessive protagonist awake at night as a graduate student at Berkeley, California, and where he is striving to solve the Malosz mathematical conjecture. To effect so,he believes that “the parts of him that were Milo Andret needed to go absent”. Solving the Malosz brings him renown and a prestigious professorship at Princeton, but he cannot escape his self-destructive proclivities, and now we wonder: how effect you solve a problem like Milo?Much like its protagonist,the novel is variously brilliant, flawed and frustrating Related: Review: America America by Ethan Canin Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com