On October 26th 2010, the world rang with news of Paul the Octopus’ death in the Oberhausen aquarium. Paul’s eight correct predictions of the outcome of eight World Cup matches had made him into a star: during the tournament, Spanish-language websites wrote twice as much about him as they did about eventual Cup winners Spain. By the end of the year Paul was Twitter’s 10th most popular topic in 25 billion threads.

 

In the 65 million years since the appearance of octopuses on Earth, Paul was the first to gain world-wide fame. He achieved this remarkable feat by guessing the exact outcomes of the South Africa World Cup football matches; and he is the first octopus whose ashes have been enshrined. Fact has outdone fiction. To tell this story, Luciano Minerva has written a novel interlaced with history and current events.

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