Excerpt from The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The drop wasn’t very high. A few yards, just long enough to feel a slight void in your stomach and nothing beneath your feet. And then Alice was facedown in the snow, her skis pointing straight up in the air, and her fibula broken.

She didn’t really feel that bad. To tell the truth, she didn’t feel a thing. Only the snow that had slipped under her scarf and into her helmet and burned her skin.

The first thing she did was move her arms. When she was little and woke up to find it had snowed, her father would wrap her up tight and carry her downstairs. They would walk to the center of the courtyard and, hand in hand, would count to three and fall backward like a deadweight. Then her father would say make an angel, and Alice would move her arms up and down. When she got up and looked at her outline sculpted in the white, it really did look like the shadow of an angel with outspread wings.

Alice made a snow angel, just like that, for no reason, just to prove to herself that she was still alive. She managed to turn her head to one side and start breathing again, even though it felt as if the air wasn’t going where it was supposed to. She had the strange sensation of not knowing which way her legs were turned. The very strange sensation of no longer having legs at all.

She tried to get up, but she couldn’t.

If it weren’t for the fog, someone might have seen her from above, a green stain splayed at the bottom of a gully, a few steps from the spot where a little waterfall would start flowing again in the spring, where, with the first warmth, wild strawberries would grow, and if you waited long enough they’d ripen, as sweet as candy, and you could pick a basketful in a day. Alice cried for help, but her thin voice was swallowed up by the fog. She tried to get up again, or at least to turn over, but it was no use.

Her father had told her that people who freeze to death feel very hot and, just before dying, have an urge to get undressed. Almost everyone who dies of cold is found in their underwear. And hers were dirty.

She was starting to lose feeling in her fingers as well. She took off her glove, blew into it, and then put it back on her clenched fist, to warm it up. She did the same with her other hand. She repeated this ludicrous gesture two or three times.

It’s your extremities that get you, her father always said. Your toes and fingers, your nose and ears. Your heart does everything in its power to keep the blood to itself, leaving the rest to freeze.

Alice imagined her fingers turning blue and then, slowly, her arms and her legs. She thought about her heart pumping harder and harder, trying to keep in all the remaining warmth. She would go so stiff that if a wolf passed by it would snap off one of her arms just by stepping on it.

They must be looking for me.

I wonder if there really are any wolves around here.

I can’t feel my fingers anymore.

If only I hadn’t drunk that milk.

Bo-dy weight for-ward.

Of course not, wolves would be hibernating now.

Eric will be furious.

I don’t want to race.

Don’t be stupid, you know very well that wolves don’t hiber­nate.

Her thoughts were growing more and more circular and illogical.

The sun sank slowly behind Mount Chaberton as if nothing was the matter. The shadow of the mountains spread over Alice and the fog turned completely black.

Reprinted by arrangement with Pamela Dorman Books/Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., from The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano. Translation copyright (c) Shaun Whiteside, 2009., Copyright (c) 2008 Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A.