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On July 21, 1969 two astronauts set foot on the moon; far below, in ravaged Mozambique, a young revolutionary is murdered by a package bomb.<\/p>\n
Strung like webs between these two unconnected events are three lives: Anthony Burden, a mathematical genius destroyed by the beauty of numbers; Saul Cogan, transformed from prankster idealist to trafficker in the poor and dispossessed; and Stacey Chavez, ex-teenage celebrity and mediocre performance artist, hungry for fame and starved of love. All are haunted by Nick Jinks, a man who sows disaster wherever he goes. As a grid of connections emerges between a dusty philosophical society in London and an African revolution, between international container shipping and celebrity-hosted expos\u00e9s on the problems of the Third World, The Weight of Numbers sends the spectres of the baby boom\u2019s liberal revolutions floating into the unreal estate of globalization and media overload<\/p>\n
Having cut his teeth on a series of intelligent thrillers, Ings makes a bid for the literary big time with this stunning, gutsy novel that takes a single incident\u2014the suffocation of 58 immigrants in a lorry bound for Scotland\u2014and traces back its causes through the life stories of those involved. Dozens of deftly drawn characters, an acute understanding of geopolitics, an epic historical sweep and a serious talent for storytelling make this one of the most exciting\u2014and relevant\u2014books of the last year. Booker material, for sure. In the corner of the literary landscape in which a few of us sit, hunting for ways to work ever exciting and dynamic thinking from the sciences into the contemporary novel, The Weight of Numbers is extremely good news. It\u2019s a dynamic, innovative, and compelling book that brings into focus some of the most interesting trends in contemporary fiction, and Simon Ings deserves more than a sniff of at least one prize for his efforts. It is unlikely there will be a finer written fiction this year. . . . Ings stalks his targets with the relentlessness of a bounty hunter, until he arrives at a new heart of darkness with the important discoveries that in the vacuum of contemporary life there is nothing to distinguish the apparently morally dubious world of human trafficking from the \u2018migrainous white noise of the subsidised arts,\u2019 and that self-expression is no more guarantee of satisfaction than silence. [An] ambitious, exciting novel . . . Ings\u2019s prose can ascend into theoretical, visionary territory, but is rooted in the mess of human experience. A sudden sexual encounter in a bombed-out London library, an anorexic slicing a muffin in a Florida restaurant, a horror show of violence in Mozambique \u2014 these are unforgettable scenes, evoked with a lean, immediate physicality. Its stupendous breadth leaves you giddy. The scale of Ings\u2019s ambition is proportionally matched by the precision of his prose. Every sentence, image and line of dialogue is balanced and true. It isn\u2019t its clever design or technical achievement that makes it compelling so much as its beating human heart. This novel could have collapsed under the scale of its own ambition. But instead it triumphs. Ings weaves an ingenious, shimmering web of contiguity and chance. . . . A feat of meticulous plotting . . . Ings\u2019s project is not dissimilar from David Mitchell\u2019s Cloud Atlas, with which it has been compared. Characters emerge from different places, periods and experiences, and yet their fraying threads are teasingly revealed to be of the same fabric\u2026.Ings has wrought an unorthodox anti-history of the past six decades. The Weight of Numbers is a dizzying feat, redolent of Don DeLillo and David Mitchell in its density. Only when its framework is revealed are its mysteries unraveled. Simon Ings\u2019 ambitiously genre-defying The Weight of Numbers is a virtuoso display of imaginative plotting. A Scheherazade of a novel, executed with scope, daring, and humour. The Weight of Numbers is unerringly well written, and engrossing to the last page. Like Don DeLillo\u2019s Underworld, Simon Ings\u2019s remarkable new work delivers nothing less than a secret key, a counterhistory, of the last sixty years. Ings\u2019s fiction is vivid and swift, a thing of scenes and people, smugglers and astronauts, spies and revolutionaries. But beyond the topical excitements lies something even grander\u2014a vision of our culture as a death ship. The Weight of Numbers is amazing. On July 21, 1969 two astronauts set foot on the moon; far below, in ravaged Mozambique, a young revolutionary is murdered by a package bomb. Strung like webs between these two unconnected events are three lives: Anthony Burden, a mathematical … Continue reading
\nArena<\/strong><\/small><\/p>\n
\nJames Flint, The Daily Telegraph<\/strong><\/small><\/p>\n
\nChris Pettit, The Guardian<\/strong><\/small><\/p>\n
\nTom Gatti, The Times<\/strong><\/small><\/p>\n
\nNottingham Evening Post<\/strong><\/small><\/p>\n
\nThe Independent on Sunday (UK) (5\/5 Stars)<\/strong><\/small><\/p>\n
\nSunday Business Post<\/strong><\/small><\/p>\n
\nAlistair Sooke, The New Statesman<\/strong><\/small><\/p>\n
\nGavin Bertram, New Zealand Listener<\/strong><\/small><\/p>\n
\nFinancial Times, \u2018Novels of 2006\u2019<\/strong><\/small><\/p>\n
\nLionel Shriver, author of We Need to Talk About Kevin<\/strong><\/small><\/p>\n
\nMark Costello, author of Big If<\/strong><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"