Divide Me by Zero

By Lara Vapnyar

Book Overview

A New York Times Editor's Choice

As a young girl, Katya Geller learned from her mother that math was the answer to everything. Now, approaching forty, she finds this wisdom tested: she has lost the love of her life, she is in the middle of a divorce, and has just found out that her mother is dying. Nothing is adding up.

With humor, intelligence, and unfailing honesty, Katya traces back her life's journey: her childhood in Soviet Russia, her parents' great love, the death of her father, her mother's career as a renowned mathematician, and their immigration to the United States. She is, by turns, an adrift newlywed, an ESL teacher in an office occupied by witches and mediums, a restless wife, an accomplished writer, a flailing mother of two, a grieving daughter, and, all the while, a woman caught up in the most common misfortune of all--falling in love.

Award-winning author Lara Vapnyar delivers an unabashedly frank and darkly comic tale of coming of age in middle age. Divide Me by Zero is almost unclassifiable--a stylistically original, genre-defying mix of classic Russian novel, American self-help book, Soviet math textbook, sly writing manual, and, at its center, a universal story with unforgettable lessons for us all.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1951142195
• ISBN13: 9781951142193
• Release Date: November 2020
• Publisher: Tin House
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.4" x 8.3"