Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
How to pronounce Paolo Giordano: approximately pow-lo jaw-darno
Paolo Giordano is the author of the critically acclaimed Like Family and The Human Body, and the international bestseller The Solitude of Prime Numbers, which has been translated into more than forty languages, as well as his new publication, How Contagion Works. Giordano has a PhD in particle physics and is now a full-time writer. He lives in Italy.
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Q. You're a physicist. This is a book. What can a book tell us that a math problem can't?
A. Books (novels and poetry more than anything else) can tell us about the ambiguity of the world. While a math proof is either right or wrong, literature lies between the real and the unreal and is often an approximation of the truth. I think it is in this approximation that a book's fascination and humanity reside.
Q. What did your academic advisors in your physics program say when you told them you'd written a book?
A. Nobody knew anything until the book was published (not even my parents), so everybody's first reaction was, "A book? And when did you get the chance to write it?" In the beginning, my advisors were quite positive - they were amused by seeing my face on newspapers and in bookstore windows. Then, as the book became more successful, some started to feel bothered about it. I think it was partly because I wasn't able to devote myself to my work as seriously as before and partly because I was trading the scientific truth for a more (in their opinion) dubious art.
Q. Solitude is the story of two friends, one male and one female, over the course of twenty-five years. What was harder: writing from a child's...
The Elegance of the Hedgehog is Muriel Barbery's second novel. It has sold over 1.2 million copies in its native France and spent almost two years on the bestseller lists. It has enjoyed similar success in Italy, Spain, ... (more)
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Alina Bronsky (a pseudonym) was born in Yekaterinburg, an industrial town at the foot of the Ural Mountains in central Russia. She moved to Germany when she was thirteen. Broken Glass Park, nominated for one of Europe's most ... (more)
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