Wednesday, January 28, 2009

What is Jan Westerhoff reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Jan Westerhoff, author of the recently released Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka, his study of one of the greatest philosophers of ancient Asia.

One book mentioned in the entry:
The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt.

I did not just pick up this book because it is set in my old college. This fictionalized account of the meeting between G.H. Hardy, Fellow of Mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge (and author of A Mathematician's Apology) and Srinivasa Ramanujan, a self-educated accounts clerk from an Indian backwater and mathematical genius succeeds in giving a superb description of the adventures of mind in a mysterious atmosphere of melancholy and tragedy. [read on]
Jan Westerhoff was trained as a philosopher and orientalist; he is currently lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Durham, UK.

He has just finished a popular book on Buddhist philosophy and cognitive science entitled 12 Examples of Illusion which is due to come out later this year.

Visit Jan Westerhoff's website, and learn more about Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka at the Oxford University Press website.

Writers Read: Jan Westerhoff.

--Marshal Zeringue