The Indian Clerk

by David Leavitt

  While Ramanujan's Indian friends at Cambridge included men named Chatterjee, Mahalanobis, and Ananda Rao, there is no reason to suspect that they in any way resemble the fictional characters to whom I have given their names. And though Ramanujan did run away from the dinner he gave in honor of Chatterjee and his fiancée, Ila Rudra, no source suggests that Hardy was present. (Miss Chatto-padhyaya was.)

  “S. Ram” was, astonishingly enough, a real person. His monologues are derived from the long letters that he wrote to Ramanujan and Hardy.

  Although entirely a fiction, Anne Chase is based loosely on “Mrs. Streatfeild,” a married resident of Treen with whom Littlewood had a long affair and at least one child. However, the real Littlewood, from what I gather, did not meet Mrs. Streatfeild until after Ramanujan's death.

  Thayer is entirely an invention, as is Richards.

  I am solely responsible for any other lapses, ornamentations, or imaginative swoons that come to light. The muse of history will probably not forgive them; I hope that the reader will.

  For help and support of many kinds, I wish to thank Krishnaswami Alladi of the University of Florida Department of Mathematics; George Andrews; Amy Andrews Alznauer; Liz Calder; Dick Chapman; Vik-ram Doctor; Maggie Evans; Michael Fishwick; Sunil Mukhi; K. Srinivasa Rao; John Van Hook of the University of Florida Libraries; Greg Villepique; and the generous faculty of Sastra University, Kum-bakonam, Tamil Nadu.

  For their careful editing of this novel, I am immensely grateful to Colin Dickerman and Beena Kamlani. I am likewise grateful to Prabhakar Ragde for giving the novel such a careful and considerate reading and for correcting some of my more egregious mathematical errors.

  I owe a special debt of thanks to the indefatigable R. Balusubra-manian (“Balu”) of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, who took me for a ride on an electric rickshaw through Triplicane, let me hold Ramanujan's original notebooks in my hands, and introduced me to Janaki's adopted son.

  As always, I thank my agents, Jin Auh, Tracy Bohan, and Andrew Wylie, for their unceasing support and encouragement.

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Fiction

  Family Dancing

  The Lost Language of Cranes

  Equal Affections

  A Place I've Never Been

  While England Sleeps

  Arkansas

  The Page Turner

  Martin Bauman; or, A Sure Thing

  The Marble Quilt

  Collected Stories

  The Body of Jonah Boyd

  Nonfiction

  Florence, A Delicate Case

  The Man Who Knew Too Much:

  Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer

  A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

  David Leavitt is the author of several novels, including The Body of Jonah Boyd, While England Sleeps, and Equal Affections. A recipient of fellowships from both the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, he teaches at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

  Copyright © 2007 by David Leavitt

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Leavitt, David, 1961-

  The Indian clerk : a novel / by David Leavitt.—1st U.S. ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13 978-1-59691-040-9 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10 1-59691-040-2 (hardcover)

  1. Mathematicians—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3562.E2618I63 2007

  813'.54—dc22

  2007009061

  First published by Bloomsbury USA in 2007

  This e-book edition published in 2010

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-59691-840-5

  www.bloomsburyusa.com