Odysseus Abroad

Starred review from February 9, 2015
Chaudhuri’s (Afternoon Raag) latest novel, set in the world of Bengali expats living in Thatcher-era London, is a gently humorous book that riffs on Homer’s Iliad and Joyce’s Ulysses. Eschewing a traditional narrative arc, Chaudhuri primarily explores the friendship between Ananda, a 22-year-old Bengali expat and student of English literature, and his uncle, Radhesh, who is obsessed with the workings of his gastrointestinal and urinary tracts. As the duo wander the streets of England’s capital city, they discuss love and sex, race and empire, and notions of exile and exclusion. Descriptive details are richly evocative of 1980s London, a quotidian world of teabags, cheese and pickle sandwiches, and bland television shows—all marred by the ubiquity of racism, skinheads, neo-Nazis, and anti-immigrant sentiment. Both men are homesick, although Radhesh denies his longing to return to his native land. As Ananda ponders viraha, a poetic term referring to a separation from something beloved, Radhesh longs to be somewhere where he is not defined by the continent in which he was born. The frustrated yearning to belong—somewhere, anywhere—reverberates plaintively throughout.