Simply clever, lightly understated writing highlighting life decisions, journeys and discoveries. Step into Ananda’s world, where you feel as though you are floating freely through the confines of his mind and hearing the whispers of his innermost thoughts. Ananda is lonely and poetically trying to understand where he fits in the world of his choosing; viewing his life through his eyes, you are able to see the ties that give him strength and support. This is pure artful escapism, the author has the ability to be subtly sensitive, compassionate and yet also to wryly tease and thrust little jibes of fun. This is a book that is able to connect, to embrace and leave you at the end unable to say goodbye. ~ Liz Robinson
'Delightfully witty . . . Luminously intelligent . . . Odysseus Abroad has placed itself, with erudition and playfulness, on the map of modernism.' Guardian
1985: twenty-two year old Ananda is a student adrift in Thatcher's Britain, homesick and isolated. His eccentric uncle, Radhesh, is a magnificent failure and an eccentric virgin who has lived in genteel impoverishment in Hampstead for nearly three decades.
Over the course of one day, Odysseus Abroad follows the two isolated men on one of their weekly forays, gradually revealing the background to the two men's lives with deft precision and humour as they traverse London together, circling around their respective pasts and futures, and finding in one another an unspoken solace.
'A stunningly engaging novel where Naipaul meets Amis and Joyce visits Thatcher's England. Wittingly inventive, deeply moving, it's Chaudhuri's finest work to date.' Caryl Phillips
'A superb book, one of Chaudhuri's very best -- full of wit, charm and humanity, and so delicately and intricately written.' Ian Jack
'The stunning, Proustian prose that we have come to expect of Amit Chaudhuri is here in abundance, newly enhanced with surreal comedy and wry, self-mocking, often hilarious sex. Brilliantly he superimposes an intensely Bengali sensibility upon the picaresque experience of a London undergraduate. This is his wittiest and also his most profound book to date.' Wendy Doniger
Author
About Amit Chaudhuri
Amit Chaudhuri is the author of five critically acclaimed novels, is a poet, an acclaimed musician, and a highly regarded critic. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia. He has contributed fiction, poetry and reviews to numerous publications including the Guardian, London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, New Yorker and Granta Magazine. Amit lives in Calcutta and Norwich.
