The Last Samurai

Helen DeWitt

Flit. Flit. Zip, flit. Flit. Imagine looking over the shoulder of a genius in language from the age of two until eleven. Imagine that a part of what drives his quest for knowledge is the approval of his unknown father.

Ludo, the prodigy/genius of the story, goes on a quest to find a father, with no clues on where to look. So he invents 'fathers', specialists in their fields, and pursues them, showing up at the doorstep, getting himself invited in on some pretext, and claiming to be a son -- and since he is a master of several fields, many fall for the claim initially.

A bit on the 'genius' part from page 270.

"Of course you are ready for it, said Sib [the mother] flipping through the book. You can tell just from the names of the mathemeticians - Bernoulli's equations - Euler's equations - Gauss's divergence theorem - I have no idea what these actually ARE, but essentially the mathematics at the heart of the subject seems to be post-Newtonian developments in calculas, 18th and 19th century stuff. How hard can it be?..."

The style of this book is odd - very odd. Pick it up and try a few pages before buying.

However, I highly recommend it.