Liz Ziemska was born in Poland, attended kindergarten in Sweden, and came to America at the age of 7. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from UCLA, and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She worked as a literary agent for many years, first in New York, then in Los Angeles. Her fiction has appeared in Tin House, Interfictions: 2, Strange Horizons, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016, The Pushcart Prize XLI, and has been nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award. She lives in Los Angeles.
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Mandelbrot the Magnificent by Liz Ziemska
Prior to reading this novella, what I knew about the mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot would have fit into an embarrassingly small thimble (with plenty of room to spare). I identified fractal shapes simply as “tessellations on steroids” and my only reference point for a “mandelbrot” was a delicious cookie.
But thanks to Liz Ziemska, I have a much greater appreciation for Mandelbrot’s work in his field, as well as the passion and determination that sustained him through his years in Nazi-occupied France. Mandelbrot the Magnificent (2017) blends real and imagined history with high-level mathematical equations and principles, and the result is a lovely little “psuedobiography.”
In his ow... Read More
