| A writer becomes infatuated with the author of a book he is given by a bookseller. The bookseller says it is the ideal book for him personally since he is not like other people. He notices right away that something is strange about the book since the pages are numbered in unit fractions: 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, etc. but the bookseller assures him it is not an error. Once he starts reading it, the book (entitled the The Book of Alephs, of course) resonates with the author's own experiences in a seemingly mystical way. For instance, the book begins with that very same bookseller giving someone a book and telling him that it is the ideal book for him because he is not like other people.
As you might guess from the title, the book also concerns transfinite cardinals like ℵ1, resulting in a relatively detailed discussion of uncountability and Cantor's "Diagonal Proof".
The author is a retired professor and this story appeared in the online literary magazine Litbreak. |
