Journeva
A clerk in Madras teaches himself mathematics from one borrowed book, fills notebooks with theorems nobody has seen, and in 1913 writes to a stranger.
It is 1903. Srinivasa Ramanujan is fifteen, in India. A friend gives him a book. It has five thousand results and no proofs.
Srinivasa works alone. He finds every proof himself. He is happy only with numbers. Soon his notebook has new ideas.
In 1912 he is a clerk in Madras. He does maths at night, shy and alone. In 1913 he writes to England.
A professor reads it. He says: come. Srinivasa goes. He does not wait. He writes.
Every Journeva story exists at four levels — same plot, same characters, richer language each step. Here is how this one begins at each level.
In the app you can tap any word for its meaning, listen to the story read aloud with the words lighting up, and save words to practise later. Ten stories are free at every level, and every story is free at A1.
Get Journeva on the App StoreRead it in a language you already know to check your understanding — every Journeva story is written in all five.
In the 1940s a poor boy in Brazil kicked a sock full of newspaper around the street; at seventeen he scored twice in a World Cup final.
In 1932 a Danish village carpenter with no houses to build began to make wooden toys, and one evening he sent his son back to the station to varnish every duck again.
Lena has a list of jobs that will disappear; her grandmother, who repaired clocks for fifty years, has a shorter list.