What connection can a parrot have with mathematics? How can the parrot, an elderly former bookseller, a deaf boy, and his half-sibling twins, geniuses in mathematics, collaborate to solve a murder that happened thousands of kilometers away from them? What theorems must you use to solve the unsolved mysteries of everyday life? How much literature can fit into an equation?

The novel by Denis Guedj, which thrilled critics and thousands of readers in dozens of countries, is a captivating literary journey into the magical world of the history of mathematics; an initiation journey into the thoughts of Euclid, Fermat, Euler, Goldbach, and other top mathematicians; a retrospective on the most significant problems their science has faced over the centuries.