When
we were told to read and to make a review about the book: Certain Ambiguity by Gaurav Suri and
Hartosh Singh Bal, I immediately turned on my laptop and searched for a PDF for
this book for I, a self-declared bookworm, wanted to get my hands on that book and
boy I was shocked when the result came out! A mathematical novel? For real? For
the past 10 years that I’ve been reading and burying myself with books, not
even once I encountered this kind of genre. Who would have thought
that some people would even bother to make a mathematical novel? I mean, isn’t
it enough that we read them almost every day for an hour or so because they are
one of our major subjects? But still,
curiosity killed the cat and unfortunately, that cat was me. I wasn’t really forced
to read the book since the outline caught my attention ans made me wonder if
the book was really that good. I decided to read it since I believe that it
wouldn’t hurt to try and give this book a chance.
The book opened with a man named Ravi Kapoor who was reminiscing
to the time his mathematician grandfather gave him a math problem to try on a
calculator. This part indicates the close relationship that the man had with
his grandfather. The next day, the grandfather died and which then implies to
the reader that Ravi’s grandfather had a big impact on his life for he pursued
what he’s grandfather wanted for him to do in the future. But without his
grandfather by his side, a man who had a strong passion for mathematics, Ravi became
apathetic with the said subject. Still, he strived and got accepted at Stanford
University and studied economics due to his father’s urging. There, he met his
first friend Peter Cage whose career is inclined with business. As each
succeeded page pass by, we learned that Peter and Ravi signed for “Thinking
about Infinity” class under Professor Nico who Ravi eventually befriended. Ravi
soon found out that his late grandfather Vijay Sahni, was jailed in 1919 at New
Jersey and was charged for blasphemy. At this point, there was an alternation
of events from Nico’s lecture to Ravi who was searching for the reason behind
his grandfather’s imprisonment which then he discovers transcripts of
philosophical discussions and a skeptical judge challenging his grandfather to
defend his belief. The math topics conferred in the story includes Zeno’s
paradoxes, Godel’s Incompleteness, Paul Cohen’s Consistency theorem and most of
all the Euclidean Geometry which was the focal point of the story. At the end
of the story, we learned that Ravi eventually left economics and chose a
profession inclined with mathematics, he also end up with Claire, a fellow
student during his infinity class.
I found the book fascinating and was totally worth it to
read. Though I’m not an enthusiast of mathematics, I was able to appreciate the
topics discussed in the book for it was new to me and was believable enough. The
authors of the book did a great job in explaining faith in a mathematical point
of view. All in all, this book was pleasing enough and you can obtain lot of information
from it especially in applying basic math axioms in real life situations. If given
the chance to read another novel with this kind of genre, I wouldn’t have any
second thoughts again J
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