The Mathematician's Shiva

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING DEBUT FICTION

For readers of This Is Where I Leave You and Everything Is Illuminated, "a brilliant and compelling family saga full of warmth, pathos, history and humor" (Jonathan Evison, author of West of Here)

When the greatest female mathematician in history passes away, her son, Alexander "Sasha" Karnokovitch, just wants to mourn his mother in peace. But rumor has it the notoriously eccentric Polish migr has solved one of the most difficult problems in all of mathematics, and has spitefully taken the solution to her grave. As a ragtag group of mathematicians from around the world descends upon Rachela's shiva, determined to find the proof or solve it for themselves--even if it means prying up the floorboards for notes or desperately scrutinizing the mutterings of her African Grey parrot--Sasha must come to terms with his mother's outsized influence on his life.

Spanning decades and continents, from a crowded living room in Madison, Wisconsin, to the windswept beach on the Barents Sea where a young Rachela had her first mathematical breakthrough, The Mathematician's Shiva is an unexpectedly moving and uproariously funny novel that captures humanity's drive not just to survive, but to achieve the impossible.

Author: Stuart Rojstaczer
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 09/02/2014
Pages: 384
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.63lbs
Size: 8.21h x 5.35w x 0.84d
ISBN13: 9780143126317
ISBN10: 0143126318
BISAC Categories:
- Fiction | Humorous | General
- Fiction | Literary
- Fiction | Jewish

About the Author
Stuart Rojstaczer was raised in Milwaukee and has degrees from the University of Wisconsin, the University of Illinois, and Stanford. For many years, he was a professor of geophysics at Duke University. He lives in Northern California.