Mathematician and novelist Manil Suri’s book, The Big Bang of Numbers: How to Build the Universe Using Only Math, embarks on a mathematical origin story spanning the universe.

Suri spoke with academic Patrick Honner at the 2023 Jaipur Literature Festival, New York about how a book that started out as a novel had to change course after both his mathematician friend and editor suggested that the book would be better off as a work of experimental nonfiction instead of fiction. And the work that was put into it to make mathematics accessible and fun for the general reader.