A calculating look at literature

The only sections that may require more than secondary school knowledge are on cryptography and fractal dimensions

Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections between Mathematics and Literature
By Sarah Hart

Mudlark (Harper Collins) UK

Pages: 304

Price: 1,454

How do you compose 100 trillion sonnets and pack them into ten pages? Here’s a clue: A sonnet is a 14-line poem, and 100 trillion is 10 to the power of 14. French poet-mathematician Raymond Queneau wrote 10 sonnets with the same exact rhyme schemes and, therefore, interchangeable lines. Pick a first line at random, a second line at random, et voila you have your 100 trillion sonnets!

Queneau was part of the Oulipo, a French collective of artists, mathematicians and writers (including