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This historical novel by revered gay author David Leavitt is based around the early 20th century Cambridge mathematician G.H. Hardy, and also the subject of the new film ''The Man Who Knew Infinity'', starring Jeremy Irons and Dev Patel.
January, 1913, Cambridge. G.H. Hardy - gay, eccentric, charismatic and considered the greatest British mathematician of his age - receives 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 mathematical problem of his time. Hardy determines to learn more about this mysterious Indian clerk, Srinivasa Ramanujan, a decision that will profoundly affect not only his own life, and that of his friends, but the entire history of mathematics.
Set against the backdrop of the First World War, and populated with such luminaries as D.H. Lawrence, Rupert Brooke, John Maynard Keynes, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell, this is a fascinating look at life at Cambridge and homosexual society in the early twentieth century. The book examines Hardy's complicated relationships (personal and professional, but not sexual) with his collaborator J.E. Littlewood, and Srinivasa, the obscure Indian accounts clerk who Hardy recognises as a genius. ''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.
Paperback, 485 Pages, Orig. Publ. 2007, This Ed. Publ. 2016
Author: David Leavitt