Continuums

Book excerpt: The beauty and endless mysteries of mathematics are central to this work of fiction. Continuums is partly about the resolution of Cantor's Conjecture, or the Continuum Hypothesis partly about people trapped in their own worlds, unable to find a way out. Alexandra is a brilliant mathematician whose career and family unravel following the flight of her brother from Communist Romania. She finally departs for North America and leaves be-hind her husband and daughter. Asuero Aroso is Alexandra's first mentor and, then, colleague. An extraordinary but obscure mathematician stuck in Romania, he is a Sephardic Jew, born in Istanbul, a former student of the eminent David Hilbert in the days when Gottingen was the world centre of mathematics. His is the story of a young genius, of an incompatible and unhappy marriage, of an epochal mathematics discovery left unheralded, of a man caught in an absurd and cruel political system. Robert Carr has created a bold, imaginative and engaging novel.