The Man Who Counted
A Brazilian classic, published in 1949 under the invented Persian identity Malba Tahan by the mathematics teacher Júlio César de Mello e Souza. Beremiz Samir, a shepherd with a gift for calculation, travels through thirteenth-century Baghdad solving problems for the people he meets, including the famous division of thirty-five camels among three brothers. It has never been out of print in Brazil.
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Alex Bellos
He was huge. So in Brazil when I told friends, ‘I’m now working on maths,’ they all said, ‘Oh, you must read Malba Tahan.’ And friends who were kids during that era said, ‘Oh, I remember my parents reading it to me’ – it’s almost like Alice in Wonderland in that it is one of the things that makes people feel nostalgic about their childhood. My Brazilian copy is the 74th edition.
Interview · November 2012
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