Hello everyone, I am currently re-reading it in German and want to recommend it to an English friend of mine. Could you please let me know who translated your book and if the language was very precise and fitting to the period? I'd like to give it to him as a present but want to make sure the translation is good.
Many thanks

It was a fast and furious read but there were too many repetitions of the facts.
Whilst I enjoy complicated plots, this second book takes the reader too much by the hand and leads the reader through the plotline. It could have done with a bit more editing.
will read the third part when it comes out in paperback in English.

Very dark humour, sometimes laugh out loud funny

Manny recommended it.

Wow, read it on Manny's recommendation and can only say it was worth the effort. Am now on the second. I like the concept, I like the style, the telling of all the many yarns ismaking my mind spin in a wonderful way.

Loved it, what a great advocate for reading.
Brief but powerful, well structured story, a little masterpiece.

Wow, I am not mathematically inclined at all but this was a thrill to read. what a talent to bring complex mathematics and the prime numbers to more people. Thanks to Du Sautoy. This book enriched my life.

The language and structure is neither riveting nor convincing, but the storyline carries one along Alexanders life. Not a masterpiece but a fast moving story on his life.

A little gem, the slower you read it the better.

Sindelfingen, Goldberg Gymnasium und die 80er Jahre - toll erzaehlt aus einer interessanten und sehr lustigen PErspektive. Gut Gemacht Iris!

Not one of his best, preferred the earlier works. But then, you cant hit the spot for every reader every time.

Absolutely brilliant - to the very end. Did not want to stop reading this book.

Parts are brilliant, and the characters are psychologically brilliant, but the structure through me and jolted me out of the story.
However, why is this book so little known in the 'Classics'. Finally I found a very good representative from Spain.

Could read is again right away - the devil is in the detail

Loved his short story 'An idyll in winter'.

REcommended by Spellbound

I hear the UK TV program had great actors and made it more than the book. The book has good characterisations but not the most riveting read.

What fun, what style, made me laugh out loud.
And I liked how the narrator takes the reader by the hand (leading/misleading). Will try to read the series from the beginning in German since the translation indicates a few Austrian jokes/insights worth savouring.

Within seconds you are hooked into each of these short stories. All little William Boyd gems. Glad I picked this one up.

Boyd never disappoints. But this is not one of his best, a little too much action and complication cramped into the plot line and the various characters were not totally believable to me. But still far above the average contemporary writer.

The author does not discuss anything new, he just puts it all very well together, chose excellent illustrations to make his points.
It is written in such fine and clear language and structure, that it just flows of the pages. Such a pleasure to read and to use as a little nudge to contemplate about a few truths in life.

Never thought that matricide could be a fascinating topic,With honesty, irony and insightful wit, this little gem carves a realistic path through a whole raft of family issues.

Most of what Dawkins explains in this book was not yet known when I went to school.
My jaw was dropping several times during this most pleasurable trip through the physical evidence of evolution.
In 4 billion years we went from a single cell to a fully developed human, and now each of us has repreated it in the 9 months we are in the womb of our mother. The wonder of epigenisis without a blueprint!

But the funniest part in it was his quote of Monty Pythons 'All things dull and ugly':
All things dull and ugly
All creatures short and squat
All things rude and nasty
The Lord God made the lot

Each little snake that poisons
Each little wasp that stings
He made their brutish venom
He made their horrid wings

All things sick and cancerous
All evil great and small
All things foul and dangerous
The Lord God made them all

Each nasty little hornet
Each beastly little squid
Who made the spiky urchin?
Who made the sharks? He did
All things scabbed and cancerous
All pox great and small
Putrid, foul and gangrenous
The Lord God made them all.

And if you ever want to marvel at nature, look at this virus, that looks like a lunar lander.
http://www.armageddononline.org/image/virus2.JPG

And this is just a single cell?
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSF9klvBdcjl-P7E6SsFU9cyeCi...

I did not know that the skeleton of all mammals is identical in the structure and sequence of bones. Just the size and shape differs.

What an eye-opening book.

I cant see the point of reading this instead of Illiad or Odyssee. It is less imaginative and as formulaic.

Thanks to Eva for lending this to me, what fun to read. This was my first Jo Nesbo and I look forward to being entertained by the next four on my pile which Erika kindly lent to me.

This is the first in the series according to Jo Nesbo website

Am loving it, but the podcasts are better. His voice and diction add his personal subtle humour to the stories and allow the imagination to see what he saw.

Recommended by Ricci

Seems a good anti-war book I have never heard of.

BBC forgotten classic