The Genius in my Basement

An intimate portrait of an everyday genius.

Alexander Masters tripped over his first subject on a Cambridge pavement, and the result was the multi-award-winning bestseller Stuart: A Life Backwards. The second, he’s found under his floorboards.

One of the greatest mathematical prodigies of the twentieth century stomps around the basement in semi-darkness, dodging between stalagmites of bus timetables and engorged plastic bags. He eats tinned kippers stirred into packets of Bombay Mix. Simon is exploring a theoretical puzzle so complex and critical to our understanding of the universe, that it is known as the Monster. It looks like a sudoku table – except a sudoku table has nine columns of numbers.

The Monster has 808017424794512875886459904961710757005754368000000000.
But Simon’s also up to something else. What’s inside the decaying sports bag he never lets out of his clutches? Why does he hurtle out of the house in the middle of the night? And – Good God! – what is that noxious smell that creeps up the stairwell?
The Genius in my Basement is the grumpy, poignant, comical story – more intimate than either the author or his subject intended – about the frailty of brilliance, Britain’s most uncooperative egghead, and a happy man.