LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
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
Liz Robinson
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Odysseus Abroad Synopsis
It's 1985. Twenty-two-year-old Ananda has been a student in London for two years, practicing at being a poet. He's homesick, thinks of himself as an inveterate outsider, and yet he can't help feeling that there is something romantic about his isolation. His 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, we follow Ananda and Radhesh on one of their weekly forays about town. Weaving back and forth in time, Chaudhuri gradually reveals the background to the two men's lives with deft precision and humour as they walk through London together, circling around their respective pasts and futures, and finding in one another an unspoken solace. Written in a voice that is tender, wry and unsentimental, -Odysseus Abroad is a lyrical and modern exploration of loneliness and failure - as well as a love letter to Homer and Joyce - by one of our most celebrated writers.
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Press Reviews
Amit Chaudhuri Press Reviews
'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
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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.
Author photo © Geoff Pugh
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