Paolo Giordano is also the author of the critically acclaimed Like Family and The Human Body, and the international bestseller The Solitude of Prime Numbers, which has been translated into more than forty languages, as well as How Contagion Works, about the COVID-19 pandemic. Heaven and Earth is his latest novel. Giordano has a PhD in particle physics and is now a full-time writer. He lives in Italy.

Anne Milano Appel, PhD, has been awarded the Italian Prose in Translation Award (2015), the John Florio Prize for Italian translation (2013), and the Northern California Book Award for Translation, Fiction (2013, 2014). She has translated works by Claudio Magris, Paolo Giordano, Giovanni Arpino, and numerous others.