Vladimir Belinski holds a permanent professor position at the International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics Network (ICRANet), Italy. He is noted for his role in several key developments in theoretical physics, including the Belinski-Khalatnikov-Lifshitz conjecture on the behavior of generic solutions of Einstein equations near a cosmological singularity, the Belinski-Zakharov transform, and the 'Inflationary Attractor'. He is co-author of the book Gravitational Solitons (Cambridge, 2001) and has received the Landau Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1974) and Marcel Grossmann Award (2012). Marc Henneaux is Full Professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and Director of the International Solvay Institutes for Physics and Chemistry. He has contributed significantly to understandings of gravity and black holes in three dimensions, and the geometrical and algebraic aspects of theories with a gauge freedom (in particular the Becchi-Rouet-Stora-Tyutin symmetry and its cohomology). He has received the Francqui Prize (2000), the Humboldt Prize (2009), the Bogoliubov Prize (2014), the Fonds National de La Recherche Scientifique (FNRS) Quinquennal Prize in Fundamental Exact Sciences (2015), and two ERC advanced grants (2011-2015 and 2016-2021).

'The present monograph is a carefully developed overview about the mathematical details of the big bang singularity, mainly within (but not restricted to) general relativity theory. Chapter 1 presents the basic structure of the singularity, including the Kasner-like and the oscillatory-like cases. Chapters 2 and 3 deal with the Bianchi models, especially the BLK-cases Bianchi VIII and IX and the chaotic character observed there. In chapter 4, the influence of matter and/or changed space-time dimension are discussed. Chapters 5 and 6 deal with the billiard representation of the dynamical system describing the approach to the singularity by a mathematical equivalence of the system of equations to the motion of a point particle in a region with boundary, where (like in the billiard game), the article is reflected at the boundary. This idea is formalized in chapter 7 by the introduction of the Coxeter group. The appendices are useful for several topics, e.g., the spinor field and the Kac-Moody algebra.' Hans-Jürgen Schmidt, Zentralblatt MATH

• Preface; 1. Introduction and outline; Part I. BKL Analysis: 2. Basic structure of cosmological singularity; 3. Homogeneous cosmological models; 4. On the cosmological chaos; 5. On the Inuence of matter and spacetime dimension; Part II. Cosmological Billiards: 6. The billiard of four-dimensional vacuum gravity; 7. General Cosmological Billiards; 8. Hyperbolic Coxeter groups; Appendix A. Various technical derivations; Appendix B. Homogeneous spaces and Bianchi classification; Appendix C. Spinor field; Appendix D. Lorentzian Kac-Moody algebras; References; Index.

Vladimir Belinski holds a permanent professor position at the International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics Network (ICRANet), Italy. He is noted for his role in several key developments in theoretical physics, including the Belinski-Khalatnikov-Lifshitz conjecture on the behavior of generic solutions of Einstein equations near a cosmological singularity, the Belinski-Zakharov transform, and the 'Inflationary Attractor'. He is co-author of the book Gravitational Solitons (Cambridge, 2001) and has received the Landau Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1974) and Marcel Grossmann Award (2012). Marc Henneaux is Full Professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and Director of the International Solvay Institutes for Physics and Chemistry. He has contributed significantly to understandings of gravity and black holes in three dimensions, and the geometrical and algebraic aspects of theories with a gauge freedom (in particular the Becchi-Rouet-Stora-Tyutin symmetry and its cohomology). He has received the Francqui Prize (2000), the Humboldt Prize (2009), the Bogoliubov Prize (2014), the Fonds National de La Recherche Scientifique (FNRS) Quinquennal Prize in Fundamental Exact Sciences (2015), and two ERC advanced grants (2011-2015 and 2016-2021).

'The present monograph is a carefully developed overview about the mathematical details of the big bang singularity, mainly within (but not restricted to) general relativity theory. Chapter 1 presents the basic structure of the singularity, including the Kasner-like and the oscillatory-like cases. Chapters 2 and 3 deal with the Bianchi models, especially the BLK-cases Bianchi VIII and IX and the chaotic character observed there. In chapter 4, the influence of matter and/or changed space-time dimension are discussed. Chapters 5 and 6 deal with the billiard representation of the dynamical system describing the approach to the singularity by a mathematical equivalence of the system of equations to the motion of a point particle in a region with boundary, where (like in the billiard game), the article is reflected at the boundary. This idea is formalized in chapter 7 by the introduction of the Coxeter group. The appendices are useful for several topics, e.g., the spinor field and the Kac-Moody algebra.' Hans-Jürgen Schmidt, Zentralblatt MATH

• Preface; 1. Introduction and outline; Part I. BKL Analysis: 2. Basic structure of cosmological singularity; 3. Homogeneous cosmological models; 4. On the cosmological chaos; 5. On the Inuence of matter and spacetime dimension; Part II. Cosmological Billiards: 6. The billiard of four-dimensional vacuum gravity; 7. General Cosmological Billiards; 8. Hyperbolic Coxeter groups; Appendix A. Various technical derivations; Appendix B. Homogeneous spaces and Bianchi classification; Appendix C. Spinor field; Appendix D. Lorentzian Kac-Moody algebras; References; Index.