The Oxford Murders (novel)
Encyclopedia
The Oxford Murders is a novel by the Argentine
author Guillermo Martínez
, first published in 2003
. There is a 2005 translation by Sonia Soto.
The story tells about a professor of logic
, who, along with a graduate student, investigates a series of bizarre, mathematically-based murders in Oxford
, England
.
are the key to a mysterious sequence of murders
. Each new death that occurs is accompanied by a different mathematical shape, starting with a circle
. This pure mathematical form heralds the death of Mrs Eagleton, the landlady of a young Argentine
mathematician
who narrates the story. It appears that the serial killer
can be stopped only if somebody can decode the next symbol in the sequence. The mathematics graduate is joined by the leading Oxford
logician Arthur Seldom on the quest to solve the cryptic clues.
The book explains how hard it can be to solve math in a cryptic form.
, English
, French
, Italian
, German
, Portuguese
, Russian
, Japanese
, Polish
, Dutch
, Serbian
, Bulgarian
, Croatian
, Greek
, Danish
, Catalan
, Hebrew
and Albanian
with different translations for the title:
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
author Guillermo Martínez
Guillermo Martínez
Guillermo Martínez is an Argentine novelist and short story writer.Martínez was born in Bahía Blanca, Argentina. He gained a PhD in mathematical logic at the University of Buenos Aires....
, first published in 2003
2003 in literature
The year 2003 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Peter Ackroyd - The Clerkenwell Tales*Atsuko Asano - No...
. There is a 2005 translation by Sonia Soto.
The story tells about a professor of logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
, who, along with a graduate student, investigates a series of bizarre, mathematically-based murders in Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
.
Plot introduction
In this thriller, mathematical symbolsTable of mathematical symbols
This is a listing of common symbols found within all branches of mathematics. Each symbol is listed in both HTML, which depends on appropriate fonts being installed, and in , as an image.-Symbols:-Variations:...
are the key to a mysterious sequence of murders
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
. Each new death that occurs is accompanied by a different mathematical shape, starting with a circle
Circle
A circle is a simple shape of Euclidean geometry consisting of those points in a plane that are a given distance from a given point, the centre. The distance between any of the points and the centre is called the radius....
. This pure mathematical form heralds the death of Mrs Eagleton, the landlady of a young Argentine
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
mathematician
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
who narrates the story. It appears that the serial killer
Serial killer
A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
can be stopped only if somebody can decode the next symbol in the sequence. The mathematics graduate is joined by the leading Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
logician Arthur Seldom on the quest to solve the cryptic clues.
The book explains how hard it can be to solve math in a cryptic form.
Selected editions
- Abacus (2005). ISBN 0-349-11721-7. Paperback, English.
- MacAdam/Cage Publishing (2005). ISBN 1-59692-150-1. Hardback, English.
International editions
The book has been translated into several languages including ChineseChinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
, English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
, Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
, Serbian
Serbian language
Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
, Bulgarian
Bulgarian language
Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...
, Croatian
Croatian language
Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
, Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
, Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
, Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
and Albanian
Albanian language
Albanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece...
with different translations for the title:
- Argentina, Japan, Serbia: Imperceptible Crimes
- China: Oxford Mystery
- Spain, Romania, Kosova, Albania: Oxford Crimes
- Bulgaria, Greece: The Oxford Sequence
- Sweden: Murders in Oxford
- Italy, Poland, Croatia: Oxford Series
- France: Mathematics of a crime
- Germany: The Pythagoras Murders
- Iceland: Ósýnilegir glæpir
See also
- The Oxford MurdersThe Oxford Murders (film)The Oxford Murders is a 2008 film directed by Álex de la Iglesia. This thriller film is adapted from the novel of the same name by the Argentine mathematician and writer Guillermo Martínez. The film stars Elijah Wood, John Hurt and the Spanish actress Leonor Watling.-Plot:It is 1993...
, a 2007 film directed by Álex de la IglesiaÁlex de la IglesiaAlejandro "Álex" de la Iglesia Mendoza is a Spanish film director, screenwriter, film producer and former comic book artist.Most of De La Iglesia's films reached cult status due to their weird sense of humour.- Biography :...
, starring Elijah WoodElijah WoodElijah Jordan Wood is an American actor. He made his film debut with a minor part in Back to the Future Part II , then landed a succession of larger roles that made him a critically acclaimed child actor by age 9. He is best known for his high-profile role as Frodo Baggins in Peter Jackson's...
and John HurtJohn HurtJohn Vincent Hurt, CBE is an English actor, known for his leading roles as John Merrick in The Elephant Man, Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Mr. Braddock in The Hit, Stephen Ward in Scandal, Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant and An Englishman in New York...
. - The Mathematical InstituteThe Mathematical Institute, University of OxfordThe Mathematical Institute is the mathematics department at the University of Oxford, England. It forms one of the ten departments of the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Divisional Board in the University....
- Merton College, OxfordMerton College, OxfordMerton College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, chancellor to Henry III and later to Edward I, first drew up statutes for an independent academic community and established endowments to...
- CryptographyCryptographyCryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties...
External links
- Oxford Murders Book Review reviewed by Steven Feeney, 52 Books, 20 June 2010
- Murder by numbers reviewed by Marcus du Sautoy, The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, 5 February 2005 - 'The Oxford Murders' reviewed by Andrew Stickland
- MathFiction information