An Atypical Tale

              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