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ABOUT THE BOOK From Viking , June 2008 For most of his adult life—through two marriages and countless travels—the mathematician Philip Masryk has carried on a love affair with book conservator Irma Arcuri. Now Irma has vanished and left Philip what appears to be an inheritance: her entire library of 351 books, gloriously rebound and in five instances written by Irma herself. Buried in the text of this restored library—Cervantes to Turgenev, Borges to Fowles—lay the secrets to Irma’s disappearance and, in the novels Irma has written, the story of her elusive, romantic past with Philip. As clues, warnings, and revelations both inside and outside the library mount, Philip begins to recognize that he, too, is trapped in a narrative. Who is Irma Arcuri? What is really buried in the library? And most important of all, whose story is this?
—George
Singleton The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri is a dazzling combination of love and sex and, yes, mathematics, and David Bajo uses mirrors to make his magic. If you have ever opened a novel and found yourself “inside” the story, you must read this book. —Keith
Donohue David Bajo's first novel is a provocative and elegant meditation on love, literature and mathematics. —Karl
Iagnemma
©2008 David Bajo. All rights reserved. Sketches by Yvette Dede. Website design by Chris Costello.
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Philip,
a high math genius who sees equations in every facet of life, reads
the novels, but as he does so he begins to sense a
more profound
and troubling design at work. A mysterious woman appears (or
was she sent?); his ex-wife reveals a terrible secret; his stepdaughter,
Nicole, long troubled by the free-spirited nature of her parents’ lives,
approaches a dangerous turn; Nicole’s teenage brother has fled,
seemingly to North Africa. 
It
might be easier to explain what's lacking in David Bajo's
mind-expanding novel, The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri. This is an
amazing, beautiful story of Philip Masryk's quixotic search
for the
Siren of all Sirens. These characters live within a puzzle, that's
inside a maze, that's inside a labyrinth all tied up in Möbius
strips. It's as if Stranger than Fiction were co-directed by
Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Gottlob Frege. Smart, mystical, sexy,
and lyrical: I'm convinced that The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri
will not leave the reader, ever. |
BUY THE BOOK |
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