"Like Don DeLillo's Underworld, Simon Ings's remarkable new work delivers nothing less than a secret key, a counter-history, of the last sixty years."-Mark Costello, author of Big If
The Weight of Numbersdescribes the metamorphosis of three people: Anthony Burden, a mathematical genius destroyed by the beauty of numbers; Saul Cogan, transformed from prankster idealist to trafficker in the poor and dispossessed; and Stacey Chavez, ex-teenage celebrity and mediocre performance artist, hungry for fame and starved of love. All are haunted by Nick Jinks, a malevolent curse of a man who seems to be everywhere at once. As a grid of connections emerge between a dusty philosophical society in London and an African revolution, between international container shipping and celebrity-hosted exposés on the problems of the Third World-this novel sends the specters of the Baby Boom's liberal revolutions floating into the unreal estate of globalization and media overload-with a deadly payoff.
The Weight of Numbersis an artful and deadly novel that traces the secret histories and paranoid fantasies of our culture into a future globalized in ways both liberating and hideous, full of information and empty of meaning. Simon Ings has delivered a storytelling tour de forcethat will alter some of your most cherished beliefs.
"[A] Pynchon-on-speed romp . . . Ings's mad, mad world is held together to the very last page by humor, vivid depictions and a deeply compelling emotional core."- Publishers Weekly
"A Scheherazade of a novel, executed with scope, daring, and humor. The Weight of Numbersis unerringly well written, and engrossing to the last page."-Lionel Shriver, bestselling author of We Need to Talk About Kevin