The geometer Lobachevsky - Adrian Duncan

'When I was sent by the Soviet state to London
to further my studies in calculus, knowing I would
never become a great mathematician, I strayed
instead into the foothills of anthropology ...'It is 1950 and Nikolai Lobachevsky, great-grandson
of his illustrious namesake, is surveying a bog in the
Irish Midlands, where he studies the locals, the land
and their ways. One afternoon, soon after he arrives,
he receives a telegram calling him back to Leningrad
for a 'special appointment'. Lobachevsky may not be a great genius but he is
not foolish: he recognises a death sentence when
he sees one and leaves to go into hiding on a small
island in the Shannon estuary, where the island
families harvest seaweed and struggle to split rocks.
Here Lobachevsky must think about death, how to
avoid it and whether he will ever see his home again