Epoch

A palimpsest arrives at auction with traces of a third century BCE mathematical opus beneath a medieval prayer book. A solitary twenty-first century Jesuit initiate seeking transcendence in numbers finds his own work stalled by his obsession with an intractable mathematical problem. A native Egyptian academician at the Library of Alexandria navigates race and politics at the court of the Greek successors of Alexander the Great to develop an encoding device powerful enough to shift the balance of power in a world increasingly under the shadow of rising Roman ambitions. A mathematics graduate student, a classicist and a precocious polymath piece together an ancient puzzle that could undermine the information security network at the heart of modern civilization.

An intellectual thriller like no other, ‘Epoch’ chronicles an ancient Manhattan Project and a modern race to solve the world’s oldest mathematical problem. From digital cryptography to the descendants of Alexander the Great, ‘Epoch’ takes us on a high-stakes journey from the curio cabinets of the world’s greatest museums to the hidden storerooms of the Library of Alexandria.