The Indian Clerk: A Novel

About this book

The brilliant new novel from one of our most respected writershis most ambitious and accessible to date. On a January morning in 1913 G. H. Hardyeccentric charismatic and at thirty-seven already considered the greatest British mathematician of his agereceives in the mail a mysterious envelope covered with Indian stamps. Inside he finds a rambling letter from a self-professed mathematical genius who claims to be on the brink of solving the most important unsolved mathematical problem of all time. Some of his Cambridge colleagues dismiss the letter as a hoax but Hardy becomes convinced that the Indian clerk who has written itSrinivasa Ramanujandeserves to be taken seriously. Aided by his collaborator Littlewood and a young don named Neville who is about to depart for Madras with his wife Alice he determines to learn more about the mysterious Ramanujan and if possible persuade him to come to Cambridge. It is a decision that will profoundly affect not only his own life and that of his friends but the entire history of mathematics. Based on the remarkable true story of the strange and ultimately tragic relationship between an esteemed British mathematician and an unknownand unschooledmathematical genius and populated with such luminaries such as D. H. Lawrence Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein The Indian Clerk takes this extraordinary slice of history and transforms it into an emotional and spell-binding story about the fragility of human connection and our need to find order in the world.