The Sound of Silence: On Giordano’s The Solitude of Prime Numbers

Paolo Giordano’s novel, The Solitude of Prime Numbers (2009), seemingly a coming-of-age romance, mixes narrative with the language of mathematics. The two protagonists, Alice and Mattia, are equaled to two twin prime numbers: solitary and isolated numbers, close to each other but separated by a single number. Similarly, they are united by the same differences, attracted to each other, but never truly together because divided by an insurmountable obstacle. Giordano’s fiction is a window into the twenty-first century, a space in which individuals are kept apart (or together) by waves of solitude, silence, and marginalization.