What were the challenges in writing the book?
I love doing research. Researching the book was fun. But the biggest challenge was trying to describe the past the way that felt natural, to describe the world of 1914-1915 in a way that did not seem overly researched or artificial. Another challenge was as an American trying to write about principally British characters. In some way I felt more of a kinship and familiarity with the Indian characters. Why was that so? They [the Indians] seemed more like me than the British characters. In what sense? I think it is because I come from a Jewish immigrant family. My grandparents were immigrants from Lithuania. It is a society that was very family oriented, very matriarchal and I felt a lot of parallels between Ramanujan’s family and my own. In some ways, his mother reminded me of my father’s stories of my paternal grandmother. I felt there was a great sense of familiarity when I dealt with the Indian characters. How far removed were the British characters from your family experiences? The
