Proof: A Play (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780571199976)

David Auburn's Proof won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was adapted to film by director John Madden, starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, and Jake Gyllenhaal.

One of the most acclaimed plays of its time, Proof is a work that explores the unknowability of love as much as it does the mysteries of science.

It focuses on Catherine, a young woman who has spent years caring for her father, Robert, a brilliant mathematician in his youth who was later unable to function without her help. His death has brought into her midst both her sister, Claire, who wants to take Catherine back to New York with her, and Hal, a former student of Catherine's father who hopes to find some hint of Robert's genius among his incoherent scribblings. The passion that Hal feels for math both moves and angers Catherine, who, in her exhaustion, is torn between missing her father and resenting the great sacrifices she made for him. For Catherine has inherited at least a part of her father's brilliance--and perhaps some of his instability as well. As she and Hal become attracted to each other, they push at the edges of each other's knowledge, considering not only the unpredictability of genius but also the human instinct toward love and trust.

Author: David Auburn
ISBN-10: 0571199976
ISBN-13: 9780571199976
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Language: English
Published: 03/05/2001
Pages: 96
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.19lbs
Size: 8.25h x 5.45w x 0.30d
Award: Pulitzer Prize - Winner

Review Citation(s):
Booklist 02/15/2001 pg. 1108
Entertainment Weekly 04/23/2001 pg. 111
Library Journal 04/01/2001 pg. 100
School Library Journal 08/01/2001 pg. 212
Commonweal 06/20/2008 pg. 27