When I first learned that we were to read a mathematical novel, I was surprised and excited. Being in a course exposed to different literature for four years, a mathematical novel is something new. I remembered thinking, is this a new form of literature? What could be in this novel that couldn’t be found in normal, ordinary novel? Well, of course there’s a given fact that it would be more of the mathematical theorems and the like. When I started reading it, I realized it was actually a novel. A real novel observing all the basic structural basis of a literary novel. But what is more astounding is it’s a novel with several points discussed, several fields looked into, and to top that it was well-written and delivered. A Certain Ambiguity by Gaurav Suri and Hartosh Singh Bal discusses about mathematics, the philosophy behind it and the beauty and utility in practical time that comes with mathematics.
The novel starts with the protagonist’s, Ravi Kapoor’s, experience with his grandfather who gave him a math problem to solve out on his calculator. This conversation between the two of them shows the good relationship between the two of them. In this single scene only, it is apparent how much they love for each other. They are very close with each other. The next day, the grandfather died but later in the novel, it is still evident how much the memories of the grandfather took part in the life of Ravi. With the loss of his grandfather, Ravi grew a little more apathetic with mathematics.
In college, Ravi was accepted in Standford where he enrolled in an economics course. Here, he also found himself loving mathematics once again through a professor named Nico and his class Thinking about Infinity. Because of Nico, too he saw an academic paper written by his grandfather with a footnote that his grandfather was imprisoned to New Jersey before. This was new to him and he had no idea about it. The story continued with the parallelism of Nico discussing about how important and complex the concept of infinity actually is, and Ravi searching for answers about the imprisonment of his grandfather. Later on, he would find out that his grandfather was jailed because of violating a blasphemy law.
There were a great scope and variety of mathematical topics discussed in the novel. More than about the complexity of infinity first discussed in Nico’s class, the novel also dealt with the topics from Zeno’s paradoxes, Infinitude of primes, and also the Consistency of Theorems by Paul Cohen. Big words. Huge concepts. Who would ever think it would be possible to have these mathematical concepts in a literary piece, and what’s more, Suri and Bal were able to pull it off. It was given that they were mathematician and discussions of these terms might be easy for them but in the format of a novel, it would be more challenging.
In one way or another, the authors succeeded, not only in presenting and discussing the mathematical theories, but also they were able to let the readers see math in a different perspective. They presented mathematics as a widely-accepted struggle of human beings, not just those in the mathematical academe; even great scientists have attempts and struggles with mathematics. Through this, we readers are shown a humane face of mathematics – it is something sought after by different kinds of people. The book by itself is very informative and at the same time, enjoyable to read since it is not as objective as all the other mathematical books. In A Certain Ambiguity, we follow a certain story, a certain character’s personal life, at the same time; we also tread the path of mathematics which actually turned out to be a good combination.
In the Epilogue, it is very interesting how Claire and Ravi ended up together. The authors did a very good job when they still kept in their mind the personal life of Ravi even after all his mathematical adventures. Good literary writers do not get lost with their theme, they knew how to play with it. However, I would have appreciated it if Claire and Ravi’s story was also discussed in another mathematical novel. It would be interesting since they are both very much into mathematics and they met in a math class.
But overall, the novel was beautiful and informative. I’ve never imagined myself reading a novel like it before. The two seemingly-contradictory fields – math and literature – were successfully merged together without the other inferior and the other one superior. There was a good balance between the two, and that is two thumbs up for Gaurav Suri and Hartosh Singh Bal.
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