A Divine Language

A Divine Language: One Man's Second Attempt at Understanding the Universal Mysteries of Math

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

"Wilkinson has accomplished something more moving and original, braiding his stumbling attempts to get better at math with his deepening awareness that there's an entire universe of understanding that will, in some fundamental sense, forever lie outside his reach." —Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times

"There is almost no writer I admire as much as I do Alec Wilkinson. His work has enduring brilliance and humanity." —Susan Orlean, author of The Library Book

Decades after struggling to understand math as a boy, Alec Wilkinson, a contributor to The New Yorker for over forty years, decides to embark on a journey to learn it as a middle-aged man. What begins as a personal challenge—and it's challenging—soon transforms into a spirited, metaphysical exploration into math's deepest mysteries and conundrums at the crux of middle age.

In A Divine Language, Wilkinson journeys into the heart of the divine aspect of mathematics—its mysteries, challenges, and revelations—since antiquity. As he submits himself to the lure of deep mathematics, he takes the reader through his investigations into the subject's big questions—number theory and the creation of numbers, the debate over math's human or otherworldly origins, problems and equations that remain unsolved after centuries, the conundrum of prime numbers.

Writing with warm humor and sharp observation as he traverses practical math's endless frustrations and rewards, Wilkinson provides an awe-inspiring account of an adventure from a land of strange sights. Part memoir, part metaphysical travel book, and part journey in self-improvement, A Divine Language is one man's second attempt at understanding the numbers in front of him, and the world beyond.