The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure [Paperback]

The international best-seller that makes mathematics a thrilling exploration.

In twelve dreams, Robert, a boy who hates math, meets a Number Devil, who leads him to discover the amazing world of numbers: infinite numbers, prime numbers, Fibonacci numbers, numbers that magically appear in triangles, and numbers that expand without. As we dream with him, we are taken further and further into mathematical theory, where ideas eventually take flight, until everyone - from those who fumble over fractions to those who solve complex equations in their heads - winds up marveling at what numbers can do.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger is a true polymath, the kind of superb intellectual who loves thinking and marshals all of his charm and wit to share his passions with the world. InThe Number Devil, he brings together the surreal logic of Alice in Wonderland and the existential geometry of Flatland with the kind of math everyone would love, if only they had a number devil to teach it to them.

Rare and glorious. Michael Pakenham, Baltimore Sun

Adults who know a little about math will find this book as enlightening as younger readers will. Martin Gardner, Los Angeles Times

Hans Magnus Enzensbergeris the author of many highly lauded books, includingCivil Wars: From L.A. to Bosnia. He lives in Munich.

Rotraut Susanne Berneris an illustrator who lives in Heidelberg.

Michael Henry Heimis a prize-winning translator who teaches at UCLA.