"Every even number greater than 2 is the sum of two primes."

Doxiadis' novel is as much a reader in rudimentary number theory as a sustained narrative, purporting to tell the story of Uncle Petros through the admiring eyes of his young Greek nephew. The Papachristos family don't usually talk about their black sheep, the former prodigy who gave it all away in a fit of hubris, determined to prove one of the last great mathematics puzzles, Goldbach's Conjecture. And failed.

Doxiadis' storytelling is clumsy and his dialogue leaden. But that really isn't the point. His book is in love with mathematics and mathematicians, and with the "material for tragedy" that the form so often offers. He conspires to bring Petros to both Munich and Cambridge in the early part of the century, and to have him cross theoretical swords with real figures like the brilliantly incisive Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan (dead in his early thirties), and Alan Turing, the father of modern computing who was himself hounded to an early grave because of his homosexuality. If you don't make an impact in the field by your fourth decade, we're told, then you're a numerically spent force.

"The psychological make-up of the true mathematician is closer to that of the poet or the musical composer," Doxiadis writes as Petros engages in his "Sisyphean task". His pursuit is beauty, although it's one as much driven by arrogance as purity. Failure was complete and humiliating. Doxiadis has little to offer in his writing, but in finding a compelling way in which to promote popular science, Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture proves a persuasive read.