Bolyai

Two men's lives unfold in chapters that alternate in time and place. One is János Bolyai, the nineteenth-century Transylvanian mathematician who founded non-Euclidean geometry and made discoveries in music theory that scholars of his day met with disbelief; we see his complicated relationship with his father, also a mathematician, and the daily struggles of a misunderstood thinker. The other is a present-day writer on a fellowship in a Swiss monastery, who studies Bolyai's life and his manuscripts: 12,683 sheets of notes, some of which were long neglected, used to light fires or to clean windows.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

460 pages in the original

Genres

Historical, Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

Romania, Switzerland, 19th century

First published

2019 by Jelenkor

Author's age

61 when first published

ISBN

9789635180073 (original)