Reviews
A spiky, observant writer, with a lethal wit'
Scotland on Sunday
McCabe is a delightful poet with a serious sense of play'
Sunday Herald
About the Book
Brian McCabe's fourth poetry collection is an inventive exploration of the world of numbers. With playfulness and poise, McCabe brings mathematics to life through a range of voices: a newsreader reports on the government's introduction of the new number through, a mafia boss invents Roman numerals, a fisherman gives his sardonic take on Pythagorus, and a monkey sheds light on the Golden Mean. Re-imaginings of the lives of mathematicians such as Riemann, Moebius and Napier sit alongside witty and thought-provoking interpretations of numbers: eleven is a pre-teen sulking in his room, while twin primes are portrayed as detained refugees under interrogation. Appealing to readers of poetry and number-lovers alike, "Zero" is a compelling and bravura performance from a poet at the height of his powers.
The Author
Brian McCabe
Brian McCabe was born in a small mining community near Edinburgh. He studied Philosophy and English Literature at Edinburgh University. He has lived as a freelance writer since 1980. He has held various writing fellowships, most recently at the University of Edinburgh. His books have won several Scottish Arts Council book awards, and he won the Canongate Prize in 2000. He is currently Editor of Edinburgh Review. He lives with his family in Edinburgh. He has published three collections of poetry Spring's Witch (Mariscat Press) and One Atom to Another (Polygon) and Body Parts (Canongate). He also writes fiction and has published two collections of short stories, The Lipstick Circus (Mainstream) and In a Dark Room with a Stranger (Penguin, 1995) and a novel The Other McCoy (Penguin). His most recent collection of short stories A Date With My Wife was published by Canongate in June 2001. Selected Stories was published by Argyll in 2004.Related
-
Paperback | Pub: 21 Apr 2008£7.99“The textbook tells us that the frog lives a double life: between sea and land, between impossible distance and delayed arrival. See, those jumpy chubby reels of twitching slime, and this little pip below the chin; the first voice the universe...
-
Paperback | Pub: 31 May 2018£12.99All over the world traditional tales used to be told at the fireseide until their place came to be taken by books, newspapers, radio and television. This is an entertaining collection from Scotland, recorded and collected by researchers from the...
-
Paperback | Pub: 09 Nov 2009£25.00By the time of his death in January 1996, Norman MacCaig was known widely as the grand old man of Scottish poetry, honoured by an OBE and the Queen’s Medal for Poetry. This book is the third edition of “MacCaig’s Collected...
-
Paperback | Pub: 25 May 2018£9.99One of the greatest travellers in Scotland, Martin Martin was also a native Gaelic speaker. This text offers his narrative of his journey around the Western Isles, and a mine of information on custom, tradition and life. Martin Martin’s wrote...
