A Doubter's Almanac

the long version

"Milo Andret, the genius who solved the Malosz Conjecture and won the Fields Medal for mathematics, had an unusual, even eerie mind from birth, but not until he moves to Berkeley in the 1970s to pursue a ph. D. does he realize the extent of his singular talents. From the drug-soaked enclaves of beatnik California to the verdant lawns of Princeton University, from turbo-charged Wall Street to the quiet woods of Michigan, his reputation as one of the century's most brilliant thinkers forms the backbone of a sweeping, epic story about family, love, passion, and Milo's fraught relationship with his son. With magnificent prose and enormous storytelling magic, Ethan Canin gives us a suspenseful, original novel about the nature of genius, and a son's quest to understand the mystery of his father's life, and its legacy in his own"--