Beyond the Limit: The Dream of Sofya Kovalevskaya

A real-life Russian mathematician is the unlikely heroine of Joan Spicci's historical novel Beyond the Limit: The Dream of Sofya Kovalevskaya. Based closely on Kovalevskaya's actual experiences, the book follows the young woman through the 1860s and '70s as she fights to get a mathematics doctorate at a time when such an education was unheard of for women. The daughter of a prominent St. Petersburg family, Kovalevskaya arranges a marriage of convenience to a young former revolutionary so that she can escape her parents' hawk-eyed supervision; she unexpectedly finds herself falling in love with her husband, but is terrified that motherhood might interfere with her education. Spicci's engaging story is set against the whirl of St. Petersburg society and the political upheavals of the 1860s.