The Housekeeper and the Professor

I picked this interesting little title up after reading a review of it in The Guardian a week or so ago.

The story involves an unnamed housekeeper who is assigned by her agency to look after the professor. He had an accident years earlier, and now his memory only lasts 80 minutes. That means he can't remember who his housekeeper is everyday when she arrives. But he does remember all the mathematics that got him to where he is prior to his accident.

So an intriguing plot and a healthy dose of maths - that'll be me hooked then!

The housekeeper's son, known only as "Root" (as in "square root" because of his flat head) also plays an interesting part in the story, which gets into baseball and lots of basic maths.

From primes to perfect numbers, and various points inbetween, all are mentioned, leaving the reader ever amazed by the relationships we have between numbers. It's well worth reading, and I hadn't even mentioned that it's a Japanese translation.