Mathematics Become Magic in Mandelbrot the Magnificent
You don’t have to be a math whiz to fall for the beautiful, flowing prose in Liz Ziemska’s novella Mandelbrot the Magnificent, a poignant secret history of World War II that neither pulls punches nor puts revels in trauma in telling the story of an unusually talented young Jewish boy who can manipulate numbers like magic.
If math bores or intimidates you, never fear: I have a learning disability that makes math rather difficult for me; as a low-vision person who can’t quite see things as they line up together, I don’t see beauty in math, just frustration. But Ziemska transforms mathematics into a strange sort of magic system, and I found myself fascinated. Amazingly, Mandelbrot the Magnificent brought me joy, sorrow, and real delight, and it did so with math.
We’re introduced to math through the eyes of a young boy named , who will grow up to see his name become synonymous with his feats with numbers. But at the beginning, he is just a boy, talented but green, honing his skills. The story follows Mandelbrot’s family as they flee Poland and the Warsaw Ghetto to Paris, and then later to Tulle in Vichy France, staying one step ahead of the Nazi purges with each move. Eventually, Benoît and his brother Leon are sent to Lyon to study, after one of Benoît’s clasmates reports the Mandelbrot family to the Gestapo.
How the family comes to survive the war is a mathematical and Jewish miracle you’ll have to experience to understand, because the power of math in this world (as in ours) is complex, but rendered so subtly, it’s best discover it for yourself. The book never sensationalizes the nazi threat, nor does it revel in traumatic reenactments of the holocaust. (In one moment, Ziemska discusses Hauptsturmfuhrer Klaus Barbie, describing the atrocities he committed on the bodies of prisoners, but follows with “what he did if he discovered they were Jews is unprintable.”) It’s a strange sort of holocaust narrative in that sense; the trauma is backgrounded for the story of a young person, surviving and hiding from the Nazis and trying to make sense of his world, yet the ever-present threat gives the narrative a dreadful weight—and, at the end, delivers an oddly melancholic relief.
The ending is beautiful and reflective, a look back on choices made, on the things that make us who we are, and the patters we create in our own lives. More than any book I have read in recent memory, it encapsulates the need to create our own version of survival. Some do it with words, some with prayer. Mandelbrot? He survives, and protects his family, with the magic of math.
It gives the Mandelbrot Set a whole new meaning, made me crave mandelbrot cookies and a cup of tea. It tells a satisfying story, but some of the variables are never solved for, for a life never fits easily into an equation, even a complex one.
If you’re drawn to fantastical stories that touch on real history, this is a beautiful encapsulation of the experience of being Jewish in France in WWII.
If you’re drawn to Jewish stories, you’ll be thrilled to find the sefirot a major piece of this one, an important part of making math a magical tool.
If you love math, you’ll be thrilled to find it at the center of this story, as a living breathing piece of the world.
If you don’t love math, you’ll be surprised how little that matters.
If you love good stories, you should read Mandelbrot the Magnificent.
Mandelbrot the Magnificent is available now. And here are more sci-fi and fantasy books that delve into mathematics.