| This novel alternates between recollections of the life of the mathematician Paul Heudebert by his elderly daughter and vague descriptions of a soldier escaping the horrors of an unspecified war.
Paul Heudebert -- who was for some reason renamed "Heudeber" for the 2025 English translation -- is a fictional character who seemingly stands in for many of the refugee mathematicians of World War II. He was known both for his political convictions and the number theory research he did while in a concentration camp. A key point of the story is his memorial conference which began in Germany on September 10, 2001 and unfortunately was interrupted by the tragic events the following day.
As one might guess, desertion is a major theme in this serious work of art. The soldier is an obvious deserter in the most common sense of that word, but Paul's wife (also a mathematician) deserts their family, and the question of whether Paul committed suicide (a sort of desertion) also hangs over the novel.
Since mathematics is just a part of the background, there are not many mathematical details. We know that Paul worked on the infinitude of twin primes, but not much else. His daughter Irina is a mathematical historian whose research focuses on Nasiruddin Tusi and so we also learn a bit about him. And, Irina makes this odd joke about her discipline:
| (quoted from Déserter (The Deserters))
Most people traveling on trains prefer to sit facing forward.
A historian is someone who has chosen not to sit facing forward.
A historian of the sciences is a historian who, facing backwards, toward the rear, unlike most historians does not look out the window.
A historian of mathematics is a historian of the sciences who, facing backwards, eyes closed, tries to demonstrate that Arabs invented trains.
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