MATHEMATICAL FICTION:

a list compiled by Alex Kasman (College of Charleston)

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Three Days in Karlikania (1964)
Vladimir Levshin
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A children's fantasy novel written in Russian. I have not been able to find much about it but Rob Milson says:

Contributed by Rob Milson

Three children travel to Karlikania, an enchanted land populated by numerals. Here they befriend a slightly naughty zero (zeros are the babies of this magical country) and spend 3 wonderful days exploring mathematical ideas. Along the way they learn about infinity and the danger of dividing by zero, the laws of arithmetic, prime numbers and the sieve of Eratosthenes, the history of the number system, divisibility tests, and many many other ideas.

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More information about this work can be found at www.bakupages.com.
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Works Similar to Three Days in Karlikania
According to my `secret formula', the following works of mathematical fiction are similar to this one:
  1. The Number Devil [Der Zahlenteufel] by Hans Magnus Enzensberger
  2. Black Mask of Al-Jabr by Vladimir Levshin
  3. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster / Jules Feiffer (Illustrator)
  4. Little Zero the Seafarer [Captain One's frigate] by Vladimir Levshin
  5. The Magic Two-Horn by Sergey Pavlovich Bobrov
  6. A Gebra Named Al by Wendy Isdell
  7. Number Stories: Learning Arithmetic Through the Adventures of Ralph and His Schoolmates by Alhambra G. Deming
  8. Numberland by George Weinberg
  9. Lost in Lexicon: An Adventure in Words and Numbers by Pendred Noyce
  10. Donald in Mathmagic Land by Hamilton Luske (director)
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Categories:
GenreFantasy, Didactic, Children's Literature,
Motif
TopicAlgebra/Arithmetic/Number Theory, Real Mathematics,
MediumNovels,

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Exciting News: The 1,600th entry was recently added to this database of mathematical fiction! Also, for those of you interested in non-fictional math books let me (shamelessly) plug the recent release of the second edition of my soliton theory textbook.

(Maintained by Alex Kasman, College of Charleston)