2000, May, Boston: the Clay Mathematics Institute identifies the seven most important unsolved problems in Mathematics and pours a prize of one million dollars for each.

2002, November, St. Petersburg: the brilliant Russian mathematician Grigori [Grisha] Perelman uploads his proof of the Poincaré Conjecture to the internet: one of the seven difficult problems that had plagued the greatest mathematicians since the early 20th century has found its 'master.'

2006, August, Madrid: the mathematics community awaits Grisha to attend the award ceremony for the Fields Medal (the mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize) and accept his honorary distinction. The eccentric 40-year-old mathematician—living in a poor two-room apartment with his mother—disdains friends and colleagues and declares himself absent.

2009, October, St. Petersburg: 'Our meeting is pointless,' Grisha responds to the president of the Clay Institute committee, and—unyielding in his beliefs—categorically rejects the one million dollars.

How did this enigmatic mathematician manage to 'conquer' the problem, completely alone, cut off from society and his Western colleagues? What kind of creative processes fueled his uninterrupted thinking with such computational power that it pushed the concepts of mathematics to the farthest limits of logic? Under what conditions was he trained and what ideals shaped him in post-Stalinist Soviet Union? How did he come to devalue money and friends, and why does he refuse all communication with the entire world?

Impressed by the uniqueness of this character as well as the peculiarity of this mathematical phenomenon, author-mathematician Masha Gessen dedicated herself to recounting the incredible biography of Grisha Perelman. A true story, a mathematical mystery, the one million dollar prize, and the fate of a genius in our contemporary world.