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Every aspect of Barbadian history, geography, culture and society is covered in this book: from flying fish to Gary Sobers; from chattel houses to rum shops and from the Landship to the six native types of lizard.The sources of local legends and folklore share the page with the story of rum and the origins of the name Bimshire, while the biographies of the great and the good jostle with the humorous stories of more colorful characters. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Science and Its Times, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 1248 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.The histories of science, technology, and mathematics merge with the study of humanities and social science in this interdisciplinary reference work. Essays on people, theories, discoveries, and concepts are combined with overviews, bibliographies of primary documents, and chronological elements to offer students a fascinating way to understand the impact of science on the course of human history and how science affects everyday life. Entries represent people and developments throughout the world, from about 2000 B.C. through the end of the twentieth century. ... Read more

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This work is a biographical sketch of the lives of two celebrated Indian scientists, J.C. Bose, the plant physiologist, and Srinivasa Ramanujan, one of the greatest untrained mathematical geniuses the world has ever known. Nandy discusses the extent to which the colonial context within which these two men worked impinged on the calibre and nature of their research. ... Read more

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Self-directed learning (SDL) exists as long as an individual is driven towards accomplishing his intellectual goals. In this article, the advantages of SDL development in individuals are addressed, and the relationship between personal attributes and SDL is outlined. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (30)

An very rich book, and successful, book
I will not attempt to improve upon the descriptions of the book that others have provided.I will say that Mr. Leavitt may have done a himself, and the reader, a small disservice by titling the book The Indian Clerk, insofar as the title seems to promise a story of and about Ramanujan.Instead, Leavitt uses Ramanujan to provide the book's unifying framework:the book is really about a time and a place (Cambridge before and during WW 1) while trying to tie together important ideas about cultures colliding and complex people whose lives change forever (or, in some cases, don't change at all) as they cope with love, separation, war, longing, desire and the life of the mind (including, of course, mathematics).Leavitt uses a particularly challenging device--the unreliable narrator (Hardy)--through whose eyes we see Ramanujan and dozens of other characters, places and events.And to make things more complicated, Hardy's own perception changes over time so that the story unfolds on many levels simultaneously.

Leavitt does not always succeed but the fact that he mostly succeeds is simply marvelous. Leavitt has faithfully recreated the world in which Ramanujan lived for several years while being faithful to the people, the places and ideas that are the subject for the novel.

Don't read this book if you want a historical novel that will hand you "Ramanujan" in one piece.By the time you put the book down, however, you will know "Ramanujan", and the world he lived in, very well, indeed.

Far Off Target
The title, "The Indian Clerk" is totally misleading. The title takes advantage of people like me.After reading the "Man Who Knew Infinity", I wanted to know more about Ramanujan.Little did I realize that "The Indian Clerk" is mostly about treating homosexuality as if it is acceptable and normal.There are many readers like myself who think of "romance" between two men as being abhorrent and who are not at all interested in reading about it.I read through it grudgingly.I would have preferred to give this "work" no star.

Written With a Tabloid Writer's MIndset
Fictional biography is a genre in which the author, freed of all constraints of historical facts and truth, canchoose to say whatever he is inclined to and put all sorts of words and thoughts in the mouths and heads of his subjects. The background of his novel, University of Cambridge in the early part of the 20th century, was the playground of the intellectual giants of mathematics, the sciences, and philosophy. However, when observing these giants on their home turf, all that Leavitt can take in is their sexual oddities, personal details like bad breath, and their human failings as imagined and perceived by him. The effect is like a gossip or celebrity columnist doing an Einstein interview.

So anyway, onto this stage walks in Ramanujan, the Indian mathematician. Leavitt then proceeds to portray him using the style in which he portrayed Keynes, Russell, and others. Thus, based on the writer's vivid imagination, we are informed that Ramajujan had a wickedly possessive mother who drove out his wife, that she was possessed of primitive but evil intelligence, and that she basically had an eye on his future earnings. Poor Ramanujan is then made the object of his English host's wife's amorous advances, complete with some fairly specific details that Leavitt is able to dream up.

An intelligent portrayal of Ramanujan's mathematical work is obviously not within the author's capability; however, he could at least have researched the man a little more. Ramanujan's picture that comes out is both distorted and blurred, a bit like a caricature, and totally lacking in context, because his years in India are not covered and his years in Cambridge are mostly described in the tabloid style.

All in all, a book in extremely poor taste, short on historical biography, very long on trash-talk.

Read At Your own Risk!
in my estimate, the author has used Ramanujan's mathamatical notoriety as a "come on" to draw an audience.Unfortunately this book of fiction seems to be a platform on which Mr. Leavitt embroiders homosexual and dream episodes through G. H. Hardy's character.This reader felt that this story was not about Ramanujan, but about the rather anal (as portrayed) G. H. Hardy.

This reader did enjoy parts of the book portraying a Don's view at Cambridge, the First World War, as well as cultural aspects of the time in England.Since I have enjoyed considerable mathematics, the brief discussions related to Hardy's and Ramanujan's math sessions were of interest to me.Certainly such Indian students such as Ramanujan were treated with some disrespect and often had much difficulty blending into English culture.

Will I pass this book on?Probably not.Will I recommend it as a good read for math-minded people?No.There are other much more informative books (The Man Who Knew infinity, for example).Read Hardy's, A Mathematician's Apology.The Indian Clerk to me is similar to a cruise ship often lost at sea with no port of call.Personally,I was relieved when the 478th page was finished, but saddened at Ramanujan's death in India at age 33.

For reference, the Sources and Acknowledgements section might be worth one's time without having to mush through the book.

A great book for the homosexuals
I am getting tired of getting books without being warned about the content... luckily David Leavitt did me a favour by emphasising that the "romantic" relationship between the 2 male characters of the book early. It took only a few flipping of the pages for me to decide I would not like to read 400+ pages of such a book. And so, I lost my money by trowing the book into the gabage. Unless you are trilled by books on homosextuality, skip this one. ... Read more

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This volume brings together three significant works of Ashis Nandy - Alternative Sciences, The Illegitimacy of Nationalism, and The Savage Freud. It is essential reading for social and political scientists, and all those interested in the complexities of Indian politics and culture. ... Read more