The Goddess of Small Victories
A Novel of Gödel's Wife
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Step into the world of Kurt Gödel: his life, his marriage, his friendship with Einstein, and his legacy in this internationally best-selling novel.
Princeton University, 1980. Kurt Gödel, the most fascinating, though hermetic, mathematician of the twentieth century, has just died of anorexia. His widow, Adele, a fierce woman shunned by her husband’s colleagues because she had been a cabaret dancer, is now consigned to a nursing home. To the great annoyance of the Institute of Advanced Studies, she refuses to hand over Gödel’s precious records. Anna Roth is given the difficult task of befriending Adele and retrieving the documents from her. As Adele opens the gates of her memory, the two women travel back into the life she shared with her enigmatic husband: Vienna during the Nazi era, Princeton right after the war, the pressures of McCarthyism, the end of the positivist ideal, and the advent of nuclear weapons. Yannick Grannec brilliantly narrates the epic story of a genius who could never quite find his place in the world, and the determination of the woman who loved him.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Grannec depicts the life of historical mathematical prodigy Kurt G del and his mismatched but devoted wife, Adele, in this overly earnest debut. In 1980, young translator Anna Roth, tasked by her mathematician parents, visits the widowed Adele in a nursing home and tries to persuade her to release Kurt's papers for study. Adele recounts her early life, beginning with her first meeting with Kurt in Vienna. Older and worldlier than Kurt, the earthy Adele holds considerable allure for the young genius, but only gains his iron-willed mother's consent to marry him when Kurt flees Nazi Austria just after the outbreak of WWII for a position in the United States. In Princeton, Adele is initially lonely, but soon makes friends, with Einstein, no less. Meanwhile, in chapters told in the third person from Anna's perspective, the young woman learns valuable lessons from the older woman in everything from beauty to standing up to her smothering family and oppressive bosses. Yannec's attempts to evoke period can be clumsy, as when, in 1955, Adele listens to the radio and asks her friends, "Do you know Chuck Berry, ladies? They are calling this rock and roll.'" More off-putting, though, is the afterword's admission that the novel's premise Adele's reluctance to part with Kurt's papers is utterly untrue.
