Un clásico inolvidable de Paolo Giordano y más actual que nunca. Cuando su padre la obliga a asistir a una escuela de esquí, Alice sufre un grave accidente que la marcará para siempre. A su vez, Mattia, un niño reservado, carga con las fatales consecuencias de un acto que cometió poco tiempo atrás. La infancia ha causado en Alice y en Mattia esa clase de heridas que difícilmente cicatrizan, y que los abocan a una soledad devastadora durante su adolescencia. Sin embargo, en el momento en que los dos se encuentren, nacerá la amistad y sus vidas se entrecruzarán hasta, en ocasiones, sentirse estrechamente unidos. Alice se dedicará a la fotografía, y Mattia desarrollará su talento para las matemáticas.
Y sin embargo, igual que esos números especiales conocidos como «números primos», algo los mantiene irremediablemente «solos y perdidos, juntos pero no lo bastante para tocarse de verdad», como piensa Mattia.
ENGLISH DESCRIPTION
From the author of Heaven and Earth, a sensational novel about whether a "prime number" can ever truly connect with someone else.
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?
Paolo Giordano (Turín, 1982) es doctor en Física, periodista, guionista y escritor. Colabora regularmente con el diario
Corriere della Sera. Su aclamada primera novela,
La soledad de los números primos, mereció el Premio Strega 2008 y el Premio Campiello a la mejor ópera prima. Giordano es también autor de las novelas
El cuerpo humano, Como de la familia y
Conquistar el cielo, así como del ensayo
En tiempos de contagio.
Tasmania, su novela más reciente, fue elegida de manera unánime como mejor libro del año 2022 en Italia.
Paolo Giordano (Turin, 1982) holds a PhD in Physics, is a journalist, screenwriter and writer. He is a regular contributor to the newspaper Corriere della Sera. His acclaimed first novel, The Solitude of Prime Numbers, won the 2008 Strega Prize and the Campiello Prize for Best First Film. Giordano is also the author of the novels The Human Body, Like Family and Conquering the Sky, as well as the essay In Times of Contagion. Tasmania, his most recent novel, was unanimously chosen as the best book of the year 2022 in Italy.
