Odysseus Abroad

Amit Chaudhuri

Join Ananda and his uncle in their pointless, but highly entertaining, wanderings around the streets of central London, between Oxford Street, Tottenham Court Road and the Euston Road. It is more like Leopold Bloom's Odyssey than that of Homer's original. There are no adventures and no monsters, except, possibly, the neighbours. But there is the joy of the relationship between Ananda and Rangamama which makes this a huge pleasure to read.

Extract

Nestor Davidson was Jewish, a man fitting in, seamlessly, without making any special attempt to do so, but having to fit in nevertheless. Was this what had made Ananda's and his paths converge - the fact there was room for both of them, Mr Davidson with his Lithuanian forebears of whom he knew relatively little, Ananda with his covert Sylheti ancestry? No, that was too fanciful. Maybe it was simply that they both loved 'modern' literature. After meeting Mr Davidson, Ananda, for the first time, had felt that there was a point to his being here; that he was moving in the right direction.

Parallels