"Daniel sees numbers as shapes, colours and textures and can perform extraordinary maths in his head. He can also learn to speak a language fluently from scratch in a week. He has Savant Syndrome, an extremely rare form of Asperger's that gives him almost unimaginable mental powers, much like the Rain Man portrayed by Dustin Hoffman."

I remember seeing an episode of 60 Minutes that featured Daniel Tammet, and I remember hearing something he said that struck something in me. While I'm neither a mathematical genius, nor capable of learning Icelandic in a week, he spoke about his synaesthesia, and how numbers could be ugly, or fuzzy, and he can actually paint Pi, and this was something I had thought I was previously experiencing alone.

His inspiring novel Born on a Blue Day serves as a unique leap into a mind no one else has.