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I loved this book. David Leavitt already surprised me with his fine short biography of Alan Turing. In this novel — because it is a novel — he portrays more than just a person, or a bunch of persons, but a whole period.
The protagonists are in the first place the mathematician G.H. Hardy and the Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan. But the novel broadens by introducing such characters as J.E. Littlewood, Bertrand Russell, the early 20th century society of Cambridge and Oxford, the Apostles, and so on.
Ramanujan’s story is of course well-known. The Indian clerk, who was a mathematical genius, but without any formal education. And on the other side of the world, G.H. Hardy, the solitary professor, who really investigated the ideas in a letter Ramanujan sent him, in stead of discarding them offhand.
Leavitt is a sensitive author. In Alan Turing’s case he investigates how Turing’s homosexuality — utterly unspeakable at the time — caused him many troubles. Like invisible hurdles put in his path.
In Ramanujan’s case it is of course his being an Indian. An Indian genius while most Englishmen regarded Indians as coolies. And there was the clash of cultures. Even while Englishmen and Indians uttered the same words, they spoke a different language. This unbridgeable gap makes me think of E.M. Forster’s fine novel A Passage to India. All this is superbly developed in this rich novel.
If you’d like to read more, you could start with Hardy’s own reminiscences in A Mathematician’s Apology where you’ll also find a short biographical introduction on Hardy by his junior friend C.P. Snow.