Paolo Giordano (1982, Turin) never intended to become a writer. Let alone turn into one of Italy’s most praised writers of our time. After receiving his master’s degree in physics with honours in 2007, he worked on a project co-financed by the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare and wrote a PhD in theoretical particle physics. In his spare time, he wrote short stories. His first novel ‘The Solitude of Prime Numbers’ fell into the right hands, got published in 2008 and became the #1 bestseller that same year. A dream story so far.
Where some have generally accepted ideas that science and literature are each other’s opposites, Giordano shared his point of view in an interview: “Writing is the only job where everybody can fit in. There’s no need for a specific background, apart from the ability to write properly. […] Science is particularly suited to this, as it’s probably the most pertinent language to describe the world of today, as we are totally and constantly embedded into science and technology.”
Being the youngest novelist ever to win Italy’s prestigious Premio Strega literary award, Giordano’s books are characterized by heavy subjects like love, loss, loneliness and the complexity of human relationships. Always with a little hint to physics, may it be in the title or the book itself. The ‘Solitude of Prime Numbers’ (2008) tells the story of the lonely Alice and Mattia and the impact of childhood experiences on their adulthood. His second novel ‘The Human Body’ (2012) explores brotherhood, modern wars and creating a life worth living. The third and most recent book called ‘Like Family’ (2014) portraits the life and struggles of a young modern family and the people we choose to call our family.
“I see the narrator of this novel [Like Family] as an alternative version of myself, someone I might have become if things hadn’t turned out in a different way; namely, if I hadn’t converted from physics to writing at some point in my life. It is not only the world of academia as I remember it—the competition, the fear of ending in some very isolated place—that I tried to reconstruct but also a specific state of mind that was dominant in me at that time, a severe, very cold rationality.”
Paolo Giordano lives in the Italian village San Mauro Torinese, where he works on his fourth novel.