"Liz Ziemska has fashioned a beautiful story about one famous survivor and the magic and mathematics he's brought to the world." —Karen Joy Fowler
Mandelbrot the Magnificent is a stunning, magical pseudo-biography of Benoit Mandelbrot as he flees into deep mathematics to escape the rise of Hitler.
Born in Warsaw and growing up in France during the rise of Hitler, Benoit Mandelbrot found escape from the cruelties of the world around him through mathematics. Logic sometimes makes monsters, and Mandelbrot began hunting monsters at an early age. Drawn into the infinite promulgations of formulae, he sinks into secret dimensions and unknown wonders.
His gifts do not make his life easier, however. As the Nazis give up the pretense of puppet government in Vichy France, the jealousy of Mandelbrot's classmates leads to denunciation and disaster. The young mathematician must save his family with the secret spaces he's discovered, or his genius will destroy them.
"Liz Ziemska artfully blends biography and science fiction in Mandelbrot the Magnificent, a gut-punch of a novella." —The Washington Post
"Completely persuasive in its magical-realist rendering of the émigré experience in occupied France in World War II. —Jim Shephard, award-winning author of Phase Six