Book Launch today

The Genius in my Basement - a biography of the child prodigy, Simon Norton

Click here to see a video of Simon Norton grudgingly visiting the printers with me to see The Genius in my Basement coming off the presses.  This was at Clays, in Bungay, where they print 180,000,000 volumes a year.  The 10,000 copies of The Genius took just over an hour and a half - 6,000 an hour.  It was one of dozens of different books being done that day.  For a moment, even Simon was impressed.

Wednesday 7th, book launch in London today! Part of it will be on a Routemaster bus, along a route devised by Simon, though he wasn't very interested in thinking about it.  He thought he might not bother turning up at the launch, in fact, because the gasman might be dropping in to look at his boiler today.

Recent reviews and features:

Book of the Week in The Times and The Week

The Sunday Times: Alexander Masters and his eccentric landlord make an unexpectedly perfect combination in this glorious study of an oddball prodigy Daisy Goodwin writes that The Genius in my Basement is an  'astonishingly good book ... it takes courage to stand next to genius and Masters, to his credit, worries about doing justice to his subject.  He shouldn't; his empathy, humour and occasional bursts of exasperation make him ideally suited for the task. It is an approach that Masters pioneered in Stuart: A Life backwards ....'  Masters 'has taken me to the edge of pure mathematics and allowed me to look into the abyss. The Genius in My Basement is a glorious book: funny, surprising and completely sui generis.'

The Daily Mail: A life that doesn't add up: The Cambridge maths genius who is now a recluse living on tinned mackerel a double page spread, of an interview by Frances Hubbard. 'Simon, it must be said, is a deeply endearing man.'

London Evening Standard: A man blasted by his own brilliance.  '... this book is a complete success,' writes Nicholas Lezard. 'That is, in producing something that enlarges not only our understanding of Group Theory (Masters, although possessing a first-class degree in physics and applied mathematics, concedes that he is a speck in the distance compared with Norton), but something higher up in our priorities: an understanding of the human mind, and an enlargement of our sympathies.'

The Financial Times: Alexander Masters’ study of an eccentric mathematician is a worthy follow-up to an acclaimed debut 'This book has the magnetic power of the Sherlock Holmes stories'.

The Guardian:  The Genius in My Basement by Alexander Masters - review. An unusual biography of a mathematician and public transport addict '... delightful – the bloggy, scrapbooky aspect, the kipple and backchat and disgusting food. In her still-unsurpassed The Last Samurai – another tale of childhood prodigiousness – the novelist Helen DeWitt imagines "the writers of the future" learning to do with words what Cézanne and Schoenberg were doing close on a century ago with painting and music, and in its best moments Masters's work has something of that excitement, something new and open and risky and humane.'

The Telegraph: Helen Brown is captivated by Alexander Masters' artful account of a mathematical genius obsessed with public transport, The Genius in my Basement. 'Masters is a biographer driven to unpick stereotypes and restore his subjects to their complex humanity with idiosyncratic wit, genuine compassion and refreshing bewilderment.'

Link to the publisher's website to buy copies of the Genius in my Basement: the biography of a happy man. I don't know how to get into that column on the right there yet, and add the Amazon link to this book under the one for Stuart. Infernal website.  Can anybody tell me?