‘It is possible that because Tammet experiences the world so differently, he conveys difference so powerfully in others. Here, he has taken the lives of nine extraordinary autistic men and women and given us the kind of insight into neurodivergence that I haven’t read since Oliver Sacks’s An Anthropologist on Mars‘ (Judith Newman, Washington Post, 05/04/2025)
‘Lyrically drawn portraits, detailed and vivid in depicting the circumstances of each life. A skilled writer, Tammet adopts the perspective of his subjects, looking out at their worlds from inside, imagining their thoughts and embodying their joy, their fear, their moments of relief’ (John Donvan, Wall Street Journal, 04/04/2025)
‘Tammet is a writer with the gumption and wit to extend a transformative experience of autism … through playful [and] rhythmically impactful prose. Nine Minds gets under the skin … by keying into difference from the perspective of interviewees who find themselves on the spectrum’ (Matthew Hawkins, Morning Star, 25/10/2024)
‘Nine Minds is a celebration of autistic talent and depth, but Tammet also writes of « defying outdated prejudices ». It is a sad illustration of their potency that in 2024 this book should feel so fresh’ (Kathleen Taylor, Times Literary Supplement, 27/09/2024)
‘Profiling nine [neurodivergent] individuals, from the young Irish award-winning novelist Naoise Dolan to the psychologist Dr Kana Grace, Nine Minds concentrates on what these different individuals have achieved and their passions, rather than their diagnosis … the research is clearly painstaking, and Nine Minds is eye opening in showing that those with neurodivergence have excelled far beyond the fields we usually think of’ (Glenda Cooper, Mail on Sunday, 28/07/2024)
‘Tammet, who has written nine other books, including his memoir Born on a Blue Day, skilfully gives each portrait colour and personality so they zip along, with loves, joys and challenges effortlessly woven together in an engaging but sensitive style’ (Eleanor Parsons, New Scientist, 24/07/2024)
‘Tammet is able to live in a thought-world of numbers, and yet he is also a writer whose qualities contradict the oft-made assumption that autism and empathy cannot coexist within the same mind. Like a novelist, he enters his characters’ heads ; he reconstructs dialogue and shifts time and place … he celebrates the gifts and talents of autistic people, while exploring the richness of their desires and dreams’ (Edward Posnett, The Guardian, 12/07/2024)
‘Tammet’s books are bursting with feeling and possibility … in telling the tales of nine real, [some] well-known, autistic people, he demolishes the autism myths that originated with medics around 90 years ago and [have since] migrated to the public imagination’ (Helen Brown, Sunday Telegraph, 07/07/2024)
‘Daniel Tammet publie pour la première fois un recueil de poèmes … Portraits … une galerie de personnages, intimes ou connus, d’une belle-mère à l’univers en personne, en passant par Bobby Fischer … colorés, vifs, amusants ces croquis se succèdent’ (Eléonore Sulser, Le Temps, 10/05/2019)
‘In terms of literary genres, something new and enthralling is going on inside his books … the wonderful Australian poet Les Murray is likewise on the spectrum, and the antic brilliancies of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books may be the refracted glintings of an autistic imagination. But such kinship in no way diminishes the bold and original solitariness of Tammet’s forays and ambition.’ (Brad Leithauser, Wall St Journal, 06/10/2017)
‘Tammet’s gift for languages helped to turn him into a bestselling writer with an eye for the detail that separates good authors from bad … Take, for instance, Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing … through his portrayal of the eccentric characters he meets, Tammet conveys the idea that language is the cornerstone of human societies … The work is also a testament to his own evolution since he earned critical acclaim and popular success with Born on a Blue Day, a book about his childhood experiences that was published in 2006. In that time he has gone from being a person with autism who writes, to a writer with autistic roots. Soon, probably, no one will bother mentioning the autistic roots’ (Adam Sage, The Times, 17/08/2017)
‘De hecho, [Tammet] afirma con rotundidad que su lengua materna no fue el inglés, sino los números, pero es capaz de escribir en un inglés pulquérrimo y también de traducir al francés los poemas del australiano Les Murray, un candidato recurrente al Nobel’ (Marius Serra, La Vanguardia, 01/04/2017)
‘Il signe ici son premier roman … Mishenka … L’écriture de Tammet est élégante. On pense à d’autres récits qui ont su, eux aussi, saisir l’affrontement entre joueurs: la nouvelle Le joueur d’échecs de Stefan Zweig. Ou Le maître ou le tournoi de go de Kawabata. Deux hommes s’affrontent devant un jeu, en silence, mutiques. Un long combat immobile, portant la tension à son comble.’ (Julien Burri, Payot L’Hebdo (Suisse), Eté 2016)
‘Qui a dit qu’une partie d’échecs pouvait être ennuyante ? Celle entre Gelb et Koroguine décrite dans ce roman de Daniel Tammet est digne d’un suspense. Le café consommé, les cigarettes fumées, les mouvements sur l’échiquier, bref, chaque détail est passé au peigne fin, faisant en sorte que nous sommes littéralement transportés dans cet événement de l’Union soviétique des années 60. Une réussite et un bonheur de lecture.’ (Maryse Tessier, La Presse (Québec), 12/06/2016)
‘Автор книги, о которой пойдет речь, живущий во Франции англичанин Дэниел Таммет, не только савант, но и синестет. Его роман Мишенька посвящен матчу чемпионата мира по шахматам между Михаилом Талем и Михаилом Ботвинником, проходившего в Москве весной 1960 года … Особую ценность книге Дэниела Таммета придает поразительное под пером 37-летнего автора воспроизведение атмосферы Москвы тех дней, увлечение миллионов советских граждан матчем Ботвинник – Таль, сцены в троллейбусах и автобусах, когда пассажиры передвигали крошечные магнитные фигурки по клеткам миниатюрной шахматной доски, разместившейся на крышке портсигара, книги, которые они читали, стоя в очереди … Но есть в романе и другой, более глубокий пласт отражения реальности. Мишенька – это не только роман о шахматах, но и книга об отношении к жизни как таковой, сама « существованья ткань сквозная », пласт, который Таммет называет « стилем открытым против стиля закрытого » … Мишенька говорит нам что-то существенное о самой жизни, о жизнетворчестве, не разменивающем жизнь на подсчет прибылей и убытков, выражая в другой форме то, о чем с точностью сказал поэт: ‘Но пораженья от победы ты сам не должен отличать’.’ (Семен Мирский, радио свобода, 27/05/2016)
‘Acabo de leer La poesía de los números, uno de esos libros formidables que te estallan dentro de la cabeza como una supernova … escribe muy bien. En 2006 publicó una autobiografía, Nacido en un día azul, que me encantó. Pero La poesía de los números es mucho mejor y está mejor escrito … su logro es monumental … Como Tammet es de algún modo un marciano en la Tierra, ha desarrollado una sensibilidad, curiosidad y empatía maravillosas hacia las infinitas formas de ser de los humanos, hacia nuestra marcianidad interior … Escribe Tammet con bella e inolvidable prosa’ (Rosa Montero, El Pais, 18/10/2015)
‘Die Essays in diesem unterhaltsamen Buch sind voll von klugen und assoziativen Gedanken zu Literatur, Geschichte, Schach, Schneeflocken, Außerirdischen, Armut. Daniel Tammet hat es verdient, dass man ihn als Schriftsteller wahrnimmt … Stark ist das Buch da, wo Tammet uns mit seinem akribischen Blick für Zahlen eine neue, originelle Sicht auf Bekanntes bietet … Eindrucksvoll beschreibt Daniel Tammet, wie er seit seiner Kindheit versucht hat, seine Mutter zu verstehen’ (Christoph Drösser, Die Zeit, 13/02/2014)
‘Born on a Blue Day introduced us to the extraordinary phenomenon of Daniel Tammet, and Thinking in Numbers enlarges one’s wonder at Tammet’s mind and his all-embracing vision of the world as grounded in numbers.’ (Oliver Sacks, 2013)
‘How many mathematicians are dazzling storytellers as well? As it turns out, numbers lend themselves powerfully to the realm of narrative, and no explorer of this region is more innovative than Daniel Tammet. What a joy to read an author whose dexterity with digits is matched by his wisdom with words.’ (David Eagleman, 2013)
‘As a child in the pre-digital, pre-calculator 1960s, I saved up my allowance money to buy a giant, used, office adding machine. So I approached Daniel Tammet’s memoir of hyper-numeracy with a certain sense of kinship. But I was unprepared for the sublime beauty and thoroughgoing charm of his stories. Thinking in Numbers is a magnificently, movingly peculiar and wise book.’ (Kurt Andersen, 2013)
‘Tammet is a master of gleaning profound insights from seemingly mundane trivia… This is a delightful book.’ Publishers Weekly (starred and boxed review, 2013)
‘Wonderful essays. Admirers of Tammet’s Born on a Blue Day and Embracing the Wide Sky will find here fresh reasons to laud the author’s gifts.’ Booklist (starred review, 2013)
‘His new book is, in part, a description of an intimate relationship with numbers. Not uncommonly for people with autism, he has the remarkable condition called synesthesia, in which seemingly unrelated senses are combined — so that each number is accompanied by its own unique shape, color, texture and feel …pi is a thing of pure beauty. Its trillions upon trillions of digits speak to Mr. Tammet of “endless possibility, illimitable adventure.” For Mr. Tammet, the adventure culminated on March 14, 2004 — Pi Day, of course — when he recited pi from memory, to 22,514 places, over a period of five hours and nine minutes, to a packed room of spectators in Oxford, England. His description of the shape and character the digits took as they rolled across his brain, past his tongue and out his mouth, is at once eerie and poetic.’ (Katie Hafner, New York Times, 09/09/2013)
‘It doesn’t take long for the reader to realize that these are essays like Montaigne’s, little meditations, bouncing ideas around and marveling at the connections and variety and sublimity of numbers. One lovely piece highlights the introduction of the idea of nullity into English, called ‘Shakespeare’s Zero.’ Another, called ‘Shapes of Speech’, demonstrates the unity of mathematics and rhetoric. It starts with Pythagoras and also touches on Aristotle, Euclid, and Abraham Lincoln. It ends, ‘Friendship is equality’. Clearly, and to his credit, Tammet has a heart as capacious as his intellect.’ (Y. S. Fing, Washington Independent Review of Books, 12/08/2013)
‘This, the 34-year-old’s third book, is a whimsical, irresistible tour through the magic of numbers. You won’t find many equations here. Instead, Tammet takes us from Shakespeare’s obsession with the number zero to the patterns of math within chess, to the near-mystical « googolplex », the largest number ever conceived (except, of course, for « googolplex plus one ») … What makes him a generous and gifted author, though, is his desire (and ability) to communicate what it feels like to be him. Tammet’s easy prose contrasts with the complexity of his subject, allowing the knottiest of ideas to slip unencumbered into the understanding of even the most math-challenged reader.’ (Globe and Mail, 09/08/2013)
‘Synesthesia is incredibly rare … luckily, Tammet offers a fascinating first-hand account in Thinking in Numbers – a magnificent collection of 25 essays on the ‘math of life,’ celebrating the magic of possibility in all its dimensions.’ (Maria Popova, The Marginalian, 05/08/2013)
‘Daniel Tammet loves math — not in an abstract, chilly way but with a sensuous pleasure that he communicates vividly even to people who don’t or can’t share it … In an essay on mortality tables, Tammet makes the point that nobody is « average », and that in fact, « the essence of human nature is its endless variety. » His way of looking at the world, quirky though it may be, delightfully broadens the reader’s experience of the everyday.’
(Columbus Dispatch, 28/07/2013)
‘Tammet, a high-functioning autistic savant, is the author of a best-selling autobiography, Born on a Blue Day, and he brings to Thinking in Numbers the memoirist’s handiness with a well-placed detail. In his new book, the details come not from his own life story but from a broad landscape of mathematical, intellectual, and literary history … the wide reading serves him well.’ (Jordan Ellenberg, Boston Globe, 27/07/2013)
‘Daniel Tammet’s bestselling 2006 memoir “Born on a Blue Day” documented his life as a high-functioning autistic savant and synesthete whose extraordinary mind processes the world through patterns and numbers (he once set a record for memorizing more than twenty-two thousand digits of the number pi). In “Thinking in Numbers,” Tammet elegantly identifies and explores the unseen mathematical concepts underlying historical events, literary works and everyday experiences and emotions.’ (The New Yorker, 30/06/2013)
‘His highly literate enthusiasm shimmers on every page of Thinking in Numbers. He refers illuminatingly to Borges, Cortazar, Flaubert, Poe, Chesterton and his fellow synaesthete, Nabokov. Tammet’s analysis of an extract from Dante is startlingly perceptive… this enchanting book… discussing the unique fusion of aesthetic and mathematical beauty in each individual snowflake, Anne Boleyn’s six-fingered hand or Abraham Lincoln’s debt to Euclid, he succeeds magnificently.’ (Adam Feinstein, The Observer, 15/02/2013)
‘As fluid with words as with numbers, his essays are artfully constructed: intriguing openings to entice us; interesting snippets of history; accessible but unpatronising tones; neat endings… this delightful volume’ (Leyla Sanai, The Independent, 17/09/2012)
‘In this scintillating collection of 25 essays (I wonder why he did not stop at a more easily divided 24) Tammet enlightens and entertains in (approximately) equal measure.’ (Express, 28/08/2012)
‘Tammet’s choice of subjects is personal, and wonderfully eclectic… What lifts Tammet’s entertaining collection above the ordinary are the often surprising links that he sees, explores and explains.’ (Manjit Kumar, The Sunday Telegraph, 22/08/2012)
‘An interesting and often beautiful approach: Tammet writes well… and his love of numbers shines from the page… Tammet’s discussion of big numbers is fascinating.’ (Tom Chivers, The Daily Telegraph, 22/08/2012)
‘Thinking in Numbers is unprecedented: a pitch-perfect duet between mathematics and literature… Mathematics, Tammet says, is illimitable. It is a language through which the human imagination expresses itself. Presumably this means mathematics has, or deserves, a literature. In Tammet, it already has a laureate.’ (New Scientist, 14/08/2012)
‘Seven years ago, for a documentary, he taught himself to understand Icelandic in a week. At about the same time he was diagnosed as having savant syndrome by the authority in autism, Professor Simon Baron-Cohen. Now it feels as though, with a few more years of application, he has somehow taught himself to understand the language of humanity – a language that long eluded him.’ (Tom Whipple, The Sunday Times, 12/08/2012)
‘His writing defies neat classification as non-fiction. Instead it occupies a liminal position, somewhere between non-fiction and literary prose … By imagining numbers in this way, creatively and imaginatively, Tammet is dissolving the dichotomy between mathematics on one hand and art on the other.’ (Scotsman Magazine, 12/08/2012)
‘Tammet seamlessly blends science and personal experience in a powerful paean to the mysteries and beauty of the brain… Tammet concludes that all humans have something unique to contribute to the world, and he himself has a gift for rendering science accessible and even delightful’
(Publishers Weekly starred review, 2009)
‘Tammets Buch ist eine originelle Einführung in die moderne Kognitionsforschung – und macht Lust, die Möglichkeiten des menschlichen Gehirns selbst zu entdecken.’ (Frankfurter Neue Presse, 26/03/2009)
‘Far from a one-dimensional prodigy, his is a rich, multi-textured intelligence. A beautiful mind … Tammet writes about the world at one degree removed. His perspective gives him fresh eyes and fresh words’ (The Scotsman, 11/02/2009)
‘Tammet has startled the experts again by producing a second book, Embracing the Wide Sky, in which he goes further than anybody had imagined possible in explaining how his mind works, and putting forward his own theories on how normal and autistic brains function.’ (Peter Wilson, The Australian, 31/01/2009)
‘Poetico, delicato, commovente, colmo di tenerezza: questo libro è un’occasione per conoscere una storia personale ma anche per riflettere su quanto la vita di persone speciali possa essere complicata all’inverosimile.’ (DGMag.it, 09/04/2008)
‘As one of fewer than 50 autistic savants living in the world today, Tammet would be deemed remarkable by any standard; but what makes him truly exceptional is that he alone has overcome his crippling disabilities to live independently, form lasting relationships, and describe his world in an astonishingly articulate manner. A unique firsthand account rendered in precise — and often lyrically poetic — language, Born on a Blue Day reveals the inner workings of a beautiful mind in all its chaotic splendor.’ (Barnes & Noble editorial review, 2007)
‘In his remarkable and moving memoir Born on a Blue Day, autistic savant Daniel Tammet recounts firsthand the powerful visual and emotional connections he has with numbers… Tammet, now 28, manages the feat of introspection – and self-insight. His book brims with humanity. His approach is honest, eloquent, at times funny and completely free of pity.’ (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 2007)
‘Il y a du Rimbaud chez Daniel Tammet. Comme le poète halluciné de Voyelles – A noir, E blanc, I rouge -, ce jeune Anglais accouple lettres et couleurs. Mais sa vision est infiniment plus riche. A chaque chiffre, chaque lettre, chaque mot, il associe une couleur, une forme, une texture. Et souvent un son ou une sensation.’ (Jean-Pierre Langellier, Le Monde, 04/08/2007)
‘Tammet kom hér fyrir tveimur árum með breskum kvikmyndagerðarmönnum sem höfðu lagt fyrir hann þá þraut að læra íslensku á fáeinum dögum. Að þeim dögum liðnum kom hann fram í Kastljósi Ríkissjónvarpsins og sat fyrir svörum á furðulega góðri íslensku.’ (Hallgrímur Helgi Helgason, MBL.is, 17/06/2007)
‘In this remarkable, revealing and nearly flawless memoir, Tammet takes us into a world that is as distant from ours as the Earth is from the stars.’
(Phillip Manning, Raleigh News & Observer, 25/02/2007)
‘Mr Tammet’s book is an elegant account of how his condition has informed his life, a rare first-person insight into a mysterious and confounding disorder. He is unusual not just because of his lucid writing style and his ability to analyze his own thoughts and behavior, but also because he is one of fewer than 100 “prodigious savants” – autistic or otherwise mentally impaired people with spectacular, almost preternatural skills – in the world, according to Dr. Darold Treffert, a researcher of savant syndrome.’ (Sarah Lyall, New York Times, 15/02/2007)
‘A riveting account of living with autism … transcends the disability memoir genre’ (Kirkus, starred review, 09/01/2007)
‘This is his remarkable story, told, as you might expect, in a remarkable way…His writing has a cool, compelling strangeness. His is a unique view of the world…this impressive book’ (Joan Bakewell, Mail On Sunday, 2006)
‘In Born on a Blue Day, Tammet describes growing up with numbers as his only friends. He writes so elegantly that the book’s oddness only slowly dawns: there is no dialogue, no humour, none of the « silly-me » stuff that you might expect. Instead, he tells his story dead straight, with an eager desire to explain himself.’
(Cassandra Jardine, The Guardian, 10/07/2006)
‘Something in the way that Mr. Tammet describes the beautiful, aching, hallucinatory process of arriving at his answers illuminates the excitement of all cogitation’ (Virginia Heffernan, New York Times, 23/02/2005)