Yannick Grannec: LA DEESSE DES PETITES VICTOIRES

 

August 2012, 472 pages

• German rights just sold to ECOWIN and US rights to OTHER PRESS !  

The life and work of the great mathematician of Czech origin Kurt Gödel, as told by his wife Adele years after his death to a young academic, Anna, whose life will be changed in the process.

            Princeton University, 1980. A young and relatively ambitious librarian named Anna Roth is set the task to get back Kurt Gödel’s records – the most fascinating and impenetrable mathematician of the 20^th century. Her mission consists in cajoling and finally taming the great man’s widow, Adele, a notorious shrew who seems to be satisfying a belated desire for revenge on the Establishment by refusing to hand over documents of immeasurable scientific value.

            The very first time they meet, Adele soon discovers Anna’s hidden agenda. Strangely enough, she doesn’t reject her, but the old woman lays down the rule: she knows she is to die soon, and she has got one last story to tell, a story no one was ever willing to listen to. It begins almost like a tale: Once upon a time, there was a simple and happy young girl, a dancer in a cabaret. She fell in love with a young prodigy from a wealthy family who was anything but destined for her...

            From the flamboyant Vienna of the 1930s to post-War Princeton, from the Anschluss to McCarthyism, from the end of the positivist ideal to the advent of the nuclear bomb, Anna discovers the epic life of a genius who never learned how to live, and of a woman who only knew how to love. A moving journey into the life of the loving wife of a great man, and a fascinating panorama of the political and scientific revolutions of the 20^th century.

            Yannick Grannec trained as an industrial designer. She currently works as a graphic designer and is a maths enthusiast. LA DÉESSE DES PETITES VICTOIRES is her first novel, and she devoted four years of her life on research and writing.