Odysseus Abroad by Amit Chaudhuri

Odysseus Abroad Reviews

• 
  Saleh MoonWalker

  Onvan : Odysseus Abroad - Nevisande : Amit Chaudhuri - ISBN : 1101874511 - ISBN13 : 9781101874516 - Dar 224 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 2014
• 
  Tanuj Solanki

  Joyce set out to neuter the epic-ness of Homer's grand story, to show that the mundane lives of people may mimic that story. And he developed a new way to describe mundanity; his syntatical innovations changed literature for ever. Chaudhuri, one would assume, shares the first ambition, for he too labours to show how a day in the lives of two Indians living in London - uncle and nephew - may mimic Homer. There is an added complexity here, of course, for his conversation with Joyce is definitely greater than his conversation with Homer. Given that, Chaudhuri's style of writing, in which sentence syntax is always perfect, introduces a new dimension. He writes like a 19th century Joyce, with the same sensibility regarding content but a style still closer to Flaubert than to the modernists. One is confused what to make of this decision.
  
  Another comment about the aping of epics. Chaudhuri has said in an interview that Homer's Odyssey and other grand books are themselves characters in his book, characters that fit the template of Homer's Odyssey in turn. This rather post-modern chicanery complicates the act of mimicing, giving someone like Chaudhuri a broad range to paint his story with, where only some semblance with the grand story is expected and deviations are celebrated. I don't know what to think of that - for isn't that freedom in contradiction with the original ambition?
• 
  Nathanael Kusanda

  I adored it from start to finish. I loved that it was plotless, I loved the musings on identity and literature, especially as it pertains to colonialism. The subtleties of seeking home away from home and not quite finding it, the mannerisms of locals that are initially imperceptible but speak to a tangible void between experiences. The genre of international student fiction needs more works like this. I would read an entire anthology of Ananda's thoughts as he traverses London. I really want to read some Tagore now.
  
  Vassily Grossman's notion of the universe inside each individual being distinct is realised so clearly here. The setting is familiar, the experience through which it is processed is entirely unique, so different from my own yet heightened in its relatability.
• 
  Roger Brunyate

  A well-written meditation on culture
  
  This short book gives all the pleasures of a well-written memoir. Yes, I know it is labeled a novel, and if I were to look up the biography of the Indian-born author, now a professor at the University of East Anglia, I would find many differences between his life and that of his protagonist Ananda Sen. But in writing of a budding poet who comes to London University to study English Literature in the Thatcher era, he is clearly drawing on his own experience: same date, same school, same subject. It is also hard to see the book as a novel because it has no plot. The first of the six parts concerns Ananda's apartment, neighbors, and immediate environment. The second is about his studies: a succession of tutors who try to drag him back from an almost exclusive focus on the moderns to read the literature of earlier eras. By this time, we are almost half-way through the book. The last four parts set up that stroll around North London in the company of his eccentric uncle Rangamama that presumably gives the work its title, in homage to Joyce's tour of Dublin in
  Ulysses. Ananda interacts with a number of other characters in the book but, with the exception of his uncle, they all pass on by. He does not fall in love, or get into fights; we never know if he succeeds or fails at his academic goals; nothing really happens beyond talk and description, but these really are good:
  

  He stirred the milk in the mug, till, turning from clear but dark to pale brown and neutrally uniform, the water had become tea-like, the spoon negotiating the vortex it had set in motion by constantly evading, and sometimes colliding into, the submerged leviathan tea bag. Then he'd retrieved it from the pool on his spoon, at once swollen and unresistant, dead but still smoking, an incredibly ugly thing. Unable to look at it, he tossed it into the bin.

  The book caught my attention as a pitch-perfect account of being an impoverished student (in my own first major, literature), and in a part of London where I did not study but later lived. I was out of England by the time Thatcher took office, but I fully trust his description of the times. Although Ananda's Indian birth is an essential part of who he is, this is no typical immigrant saga; I was drawn to him by what we had in common, not by how we differed.
  
  But when Ananda gets together with his uncle, a well-off old bachelor living in a basement apartment even more squalid than his own, the focus changes. Rangamama comes from Bengal and is a disciple of Rabindranath Tagore (whom he refers to as "Ravi Thakar"), and much of their discussion concerns Bengali culture. Here, I feel that Chaudhuri is no longer writing for the general reader, but one who already knows quite a bit about India. Here is an example, the uncle's reaction to Indian classical music:
  

  Ananda was humming a raga: Purvi. His uncle couldn't abide classical music. Not only because of its demonstrative virtuosity, which he regarded with contempt. (Anything outside his ken was beneath him. He bowed to no superior form or authority.) But also the sacred context of classical music embarrassed him. Being a Tagorean, he saw the universe in a bright humanist radiance. Any mention in songs of Hari, Radha, or Ram made him flinch. That's what the Brahmo antecedents of modern Bengal had done—turned the Bengali into a solitary voyager, with no religion and nothing but a raiment of poems, Tagore songs, and—instead of deities—novelists and poets.

  This last sentence is a pretty good description of Ananda, his uncle, and perhaps the author himself. I note that Chaudhuri has published a book called
  Clearing a Space: Reflections on India, Literature and Culture. I have not read it, but suspect that his main intention here was to present some of these thoughts in the more approachable form of a "novel." But it may be time to remove those quotation marks; if a novel is defined by characters rather than plot, this certainly has two living and breathing major ones, and a number of minor figures who, for a while, go beyond two dimensions. But its principal interest is in its ideas. It is one of those books that kept sending me back to Google to find out more about some point of history or literature (including a satirical poem by Swift I didn't know, and opening my eyes to the work of
  Geoffrey Hill), or to You Tube to listen to the songs of Tagore. As a novel, I would not give it more than three stars, but for a man of intelligence sharing his thoughts as in a memoir, it certainly merits four.
• 
  Stephen Durrant

  Ananda is adrift in London, where he is a kind of non-heroic Odysseus--or maybe a Telemachus--making decidedly short journeys with his uncle in a world almost as strange, at least to him, as the world through which Homer's Odyssey takes us. His journeys only lead back to his bedsit, where he strives to write poetry and wonders whether one must have the experience of love to write of love. Meanwhile, his real home is very far off--eastern Bangladesh. His current world belongs to the odd English, whom he really doesn't understand, and the tenuous network of Indian immigrants who strew not altogether authentic fragments of his homeland throughout London. Chaudhuri's novel is both poignant and funny. The most enjoyable character is not Ananda but his uncle, Radesh, for whom there is only one benchmark poet--yes, Tagore--and who is replete with theories: for example, Jesus was obviously quite virile. A good read, to be sure. Not much happens, despite the title, precisely because these characters are hardly dealing with epic struggles. Then again, neither are we.
• 
  Leo

  Maybe it wasn't weird I picked up the Odyssey at the same time as this after all.
  Anywho to this book, not for me or read it at the wrong time. But leaning more that it wasn't for me.
• 
  Pamela Ferguson

  An interesting account of nephew and uncle immigrants frim India to England. Speaks of the immigrant condition. Lots of poetry reference. Inyeresting.
• 
  Sara

  Symbiosis: "Permanent union between organisms each of which depends for its existence on the other as the fungus and alga composing lichen." - Concise Oxford Dictionary.
  By the end of this book you're not sure which of these two expatriate characters, the uncle or the nephew, is the fungus and which the alga. In the beginning it seems that the nephew is more healthy but by the end...
  They are both gifted poetic types whose gifts have turned inward. This might have happened anywhere but the process is hastened by their transplantation into an alien culture. They are well-born Bengalis living in down-at-heel parts of London and although they refer everything to their origins in India, they will probably never return there...or will they?
  This is an interesting book but nothing much happens externally and that becomes wearing, hence my 2 stars.
  Muriel Barbery writes about similar alienation in The Elegance of the Hedgehog - an intelligent well-read peasant-born concierge and a similarly gifted 12 year old girl trapped in a pretentious upper-class leftist French family. But things HAPPEN. I don't know if more happens in Chaudhuri's other books or not. Not sure I am motivated to find out...
• 
  Sunjay

  A humorous take on a 1980s immigrant story. Chaudhuri has a great memory of Thatcherite London, and his description of a city on the threshold of a gentrification revolution is evocative of a time wherein which we all could perhaps think about affording a small let flat in London. Ananda's uncle is a great portrait of the last full generation of middle class workers who were able to retire comfortably on a pension that was never in doubt of going away, and his frivolity with his cash is both endearing and face-cringing for our current millenial generation. To rent a maisonette in Central London, to have a steady stream of income that allows one to live the life he or she chooses, and to have an entire city at your doorstep to explore, does any Londoner want anything more than that?
• 
  BookBrowse, Davina

  "With his quiet ruminative voice and powerfully crafted sentences, Chaudhuri has carved himself a specific kind of niche, where high art can be found even in one long Sunday afternoon walk, in such everyday “small existential dramas." - Poornima Apte, BookBrowse.com. Full review at:
  https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/in...
• 
  South Buncombe Library

  2 stars for being utterly forgettable but attractively packaged. -Sarah
• 
  Tony Laplume

  The dust jacket really wants readers to have James Joyce in mind. I confess, I haven’t actually read Joyce yet, so the success or indeed even the accuracy of such a comparison is somewhat lost on me. I can recognize that Odysseus Abroad seeks to accomplish a specific kind of literature. There may be readers dazzled by the results. Indeed, there may be those who hail it as a classic. I’m inclined to more tempered thoughts. I see that it deliberately presents a “stranger in a strange land” narrative, and that it deliberately revolves around a journey full of bewilderment, disappointment, and desire, but it’s still a difficult thing to appreciate. No conclusions are attempted, only suggestions, and again, that may be by design, and it may amaze some, but for this reader, there is no magic in the results. It’s short and yet not sweet. Not being overly familiar with the author, I personally am inclined to assign his mindset to that of Ananda, the main character, a young student and would-be poet who confesses a disconnect with European literature. The concept of the title and segment headings, I don’t know if that’s the most visible Joycean link, something to be read into by future scholars, or the book’s worst literary leap.
  
  The only thing I am absolutely prepared to say about the results is that they are a decent reflection on the continued complicated relationship between India and England, a subject little reflected on in recent years but no less significant for it. That and the difficulties of living in someone else’s culture while clinging stubbornly to your own.
• 
  Anirban Nanda

  Almost an epic journey through the streets of London. Perfect adjectives to evoke an exact feeling of a particular moment. I think I can read this book a hundred times to re-experience those moments: wondering how sounds can come through a thin slit, how noises made by the neighbors above can show the mentality of an entire generation. Tiny details. Of huge significance. The mundane can be as exciting as Ulysses' epic homecoming. I was marking each chapter with notations to match the original Odyssey but soon, it became redundant. I realized that the struggle of each day can be epic, Homerian, but never Mahabharatiya.
• 
  Daniel Polansky

  A day in the life of a would-be Bengali poet matriculating at a London university faintly mimics Joyce's work faintly mimicking Homer's. Biases on the table I tend tI find critiques of of the west from non-western writers entertaining but even still I thought this was quite strong. Apart from a fascinating depiction of Thatcher's London (and the Indian sub-community in particular) it truly does resemble Joyce in its earthy humanism and the essential sympathy it has for its characters.
• 
  Samarth Bhaskar

  Set in a day, borrowing and expanding upon the Odyssey and Ulysseus, full of sharp writing and painterly metaphors about race, politics, literature, class and young ambition, I'm glad
  this essay brought this novel to my attention. I'm glad I made time for it. And I'm glad more books like this will some day exist in this world.
• 
  Claire O'Leary

  Actual rating: 2.5 stars
• 
  Christopher Dunne

  The special relationship between nephew and uncle, two people who are otherwise unsuccessful at relationships, told with a metatextual underlay of Homer and Joyce. Very enjoyable.
• 
  Susan

  Odysseus Abroad by Amit Chaudhuri Set in the mid 1980s, London, Ananda is a student who has little interest in his studies. Instead, he practices at being a poet. He and his Bengali uncle are occasionally visited by their relatives. In fact, Ananda’s mother recently left and her leaving has spiked his ever-present home sickness. This is the story of a day in Ananda’s life in which he spends it with his uncle Radhesh on their weekly rumble through London.
  Ananda is a bit of a hopeless romantic when it comes to poetry. On one hand, he lives in this constant anxiety that his poetry will never amount to anything, will never be truly recognized, and, yet, on the other hand, he kind of revels in it. He lives in an apartment with several other noisy people. Mandy practices some sort of loud music at odd hours. The Patels have kids. Also, there’s a shared bathroom that creates the opportunity to run into people at the least opportune moments. I have the impression that he could live in a quieter place. He tends to revel a bit in his inner turmoil. He’s the poster child for the self-tortured poet.
  Meanwhile, uncle Radhesh is the interesting one, at least, to me. For much of the book, he is referred to as Rangamama and I don’t know why. Perhaps I missed that. Perhaps it is some endearment. Anyway, I think of him as Rangamama in my head. He’s well off, at least enough to live without working in his early retirement and to help out various family members as well. He’s a bit fascinated with his gut, and all it’s functions. Also, he thinks he knows how to spot aliens and ghosts. He always wants to get the check and leave a fat tip, but he loves the dance of someone else offering to pay and the resultant back and forth. While sometimes a bit odd or noisy, Rangamama was also lovable. Everyone should have a quixotic uncle like him.
  This tale was a bit like poetry and jazz – it exists for the simple enjoyment of being. There is no plot, no main reason for the tale. The story line doesn’t take you from Point A to Point B. There is no big epiphany or revelation. It simply is a day in the lives of these two men showing how they interact with each other and some of Ananda’s inner musings. Rangamama seems to muse out loud most of the time, much to my entertainment.
  At first, I wanted there to be a plot, but once I realized there wasn’t one, I settled down and just enjoyed the story. There was a ton of poetry talk, nearly all of which went right over my head. I’m not really into poetry so I found the musings on poetry and poets somewhat boring. Also, this made it hard for me to connect with Ananda. I just couldn’t get into his plight, that of wanting to create beautiful poetry and have it appreciated.
  On the other hand, the men talk about several other things. There were contemplations on skin color (and how perceptions on the subject have changed over the years), food, going to the bathroom (how come European heroes never need the toilet?), movies (James Bond 007), sex, love, prostitutes, bathroom jokes, etc. So there was always something right around the corner to amuse me. This book wasn’t my normal cup of tea, but I am glad I gave it a listen and experienced something new and memorable.
  I received a copy of this book at no cost from the publisher (viaAudiobook Jukebox) in return for an honest review.
  Narration: Alex Wyndham did a decent job. I know nothing about the Bengali language and accent, nor can I tell the different dialects of India apart. Still, to my ignorant ear the narrator did a good job with the accents and keeping the characters distinct. For some reason, Wyndham’s pronunciation of Ananda sounded like Allender throughout the entire book. I don’t know if this was on purpose or not.
• 
  Susan

  Set in the mid 1980s, London, Ananda is a student who has little interest in his studies. Instead, he practices at being a poet. He and his Bengali uncle are occasionally visited by their relatives. In fact, Ananda’s mother recently left and her leaving has spiked his ever-present home sickness. This is the story of a day in Ananda’s life in which he spends it with his uncle Radhesh on their weekly rumble through London.
  
  Ananda is a bit of a hopeless romantic when it comes to poetry. On one hand, he lives in this constant anxiety that his poetry will never amount to anything, will never be truly recognized, and, yet, on the other hand, he kind of revels in it. He lives in an apartment with several other noisy people. Mandy practices some sort of loud music at odd hours. The Patels have kids. Also, there’s a shared bathroom that creates the opportunity to run into people at the least opportune moments. I have the impression that he could live in a quieter place. He tends to revel a bit in his inner turmoil. He’s the poster child for the self-tortured poet.
  
  Meanwhile, uncle Radhesh is the interesting one, at least, to me. For much of the book, he is referred to as Rangamama and I don’t know why. Perhaps I missed that. Perhaps it is some endearment. Anyway, I think of him as Rangamama in my head. He’s well off, at least enough to live without working in his early retirement and to help out various family members as well. He’s a bit fascinated with his gut, and all it’s functions. Also, he thinks he knows how to spot aliens and ghosts. He always wants to get the check and leave a fat tip, but he loves the dance of someone else offering to pay and the resultant back and forth. While sometimes a bit odd or noisy, Rangamama was also lovable. Everyone should have a quixotic uncle like him.
  
  This tale was a bit like poetry and jazz – it exists for the simple enjoyment of being. There is no plot, no main reason for the tale. The story line doesn’t take you from Point A to Point B. There is no big epiphany or revelation. It simply is a day in the lives of these two men showing how they interact with each other and some of Ananda’s inner musings. Rangamama seems to muse out loud most of the time, much to my entertainment.
  
  At first, I wanted there to be a plot, but once I realized there wasn’t one, I settled down and just enjoyed the story. There was a ton of poetry talk, nearly all of which went right over my head. I’m not really into poetry so I found the musings on poetry and poets somewhat boring. Also, this made it hard for me to connect with Ananda. I just couldn’t get into his plight, that of wanting to create beautiful poetry and have it appreciated.
  
  On the other hand, the men talk about several other things. There were contemplations on skin color (and how perceptions on the subject have changed over the years), food, going to the bathroom (how come European heroes never need the toilet?), movies (James Bond 007), sex, love, prostitutes, bathroom jokes, etc. So there was always something right around the corner to amuse me. This book wasn’t my normal cup of tea, but I am glad I gave it a listen and experienced something new and memorable.
  
  I received a copy of this book at no cost from the publisher (via Audiobook Jukebox) in return for an honest review.
  
  Narration: Alex Wyndham did a decent job. I know nothing about the Bengali language and accent, nor can I tell the different dialects of India apart. Still, to my ignorant ear the narrator did a good job with the accents and keeping the characters distinct. For some reason, Wyndham’s pronunciation of Ananda sounded like Allender throughout the entire book. I don’t know if this was on purpose or not.
• 
  Courtney

  London Transplant: Odysseus Abroad by Amit Chaudhuri
  
  By Courtney Allison
  Though it takes place in only one day, Odysseus Abroad, by Amit Chaudhuri, is full of a lifetime's worth of ambitions, unrequited or forbidden loves, family histories, resentments and attachments. In a novel that appears to be loosely based on James Joyce's Ulysses, the award-winning Chaudhuri creates a recognizable character in Ananda, a twenty-two-year-old aspiring poet who has left India to study at university in London in the early 1980s. When the novel begins, as he wakes up around nine o'clock AM with "the usual feeling of dread," Ananda has been in London for two years. He is homesick for his family and India, and finds solace in writing poems and singing. He doesn't have many (if any) friends, save for his eccentric uncle, Radhesh, a man extremely focused on his internal journey - not his interior life, but of the food he eats.
  
  Radhesh is closely linked to Ananda's parents. Not only is he Ananda's mother's brother, Ananda's father was Radhesh's best friend, and he helped facilitate their marriage - only to feel jealous once his friend took the attentions of his sister. The rivalry continues to play out in some ways between Radhesh and Ananda. The two get on each other's nerves, but share a close bond, and their encounters and conversations together bring the book to life. Radhesh is a man who has eleven spoonfuls of sugar in his coffee, and repeats stories in a predictable way that both delights and annoys Ananda, who seems to find comfort in their ritual.
  
  Ananda's mother has recently left after a brief visit when Ananda awakes on this morning. There are still traces of her cooking in his apartment. He goes about his day - he ruminates on the annoyances of his neighbors around his studio flat, prepares for a meeting with his academic adviser, plans for his evening with his uncle, and contemplates his life and the larger world around him: the effects of British colonization, the great poets, his family, class, even the food options of the city and his opinions on them (some of the Indian food makes him even more homesick, because it's not quite right). It's a vast palate that feels natural in Chaudhuri's exquisite prose. Ananda is not exactly thrilled with where he is in life, but thinks of his mother's pragmatic and fierce ambition: "This was part of the hope she conveyed to Ananda: that nothing, including Warren Street, was long-term."
  
  The novel may feel "long-term" to some who crave a little more action from their reading, but Chaudhuri makes up for it in his graceful, contemplative writing, peeling away the layers of Ananda's isolation and feelings of disorientation. He is dedicated to his studies (he's earning his degree in English), but objects to studying English literature too far in the past, saying: "The past is a foreign country, but another country's past is twice-foreign." His meeting with his adviser, Nestor Davidson, has a similar spark to his encounters with his uncle - he admires the scholar, and Davidson, while it's unclear if he thinks Ananda's poetry is any good, gives it the attention Ananda so craves.
  
  As Ananda grows up and finds his place in the world, perhaps his literary ambitions will be realized; perhaps not. The only thing readers can say with some confidence is he will see his uncle again.
• 
  Karen

  I really wanted to like this book, but it was not for me. It wasn't a relaxing read and came across as too intelligent for me to enjoy, so I decided to abandon it.
• 
  Leah

  poetic prose; very little action
  
  Amit Chaudhuri's probably partly autobiographical Odysseus Abroad describes days in the life of an Indian student living and attending school in London during the Thatcher Era. "Beguiling, wistful, and ribald?" not quite, but Chaudhuri's poetic prose expertly evokes time, place, scent, sound, colour, and total atmosphere to place the reader right there and then.
  
  I especially loved the conversations between young South Indian student Ananda and Nestor Davidson, his older mentor from South Africa! I suspect both were quite aware of both their home countries having been British colonies.
  
  Given that events don't unfold with changing circumstances, and there's no real discernible story line, I'm hard-put to call this A Novel—I'd consider it more of a memoir, since it lacks the structure of a typical biography/autobiography. Someone who has lived or currently resides in an area with a large immigrant population or simply more settled cultural and ethnic diversity probably would enjoy Amit Chaudhuri's descriptive gifts, but if you're expecting a plot that develops and resolves, you won't find it in Odysseus Abroad.
• 
  Johanne

  This was another read out loud long slow read. Reading books aloud gives me an entirely different feel for them, more appreciation of the language and description but I do lose the plot sometimes and it is often a struggle to keep going for the last third or so. However this really had no plot so that was fine! It follows Ananda, a UCL student in the early 80's, on a single summer's day. For around half the day he is accompanied by his uncle Rangamama whose apparent fall from promise and his eccentricities provide a theme through the second half of the book.
  The link to Odysseus seemed fairly tenuous to me, it is a tale of wandering and returning home, (if it is echoing Joyce as well then I am lost as I have never been able to get on with his work) but for all that it is beautifully written. Ananada and Rangamama are fully fleshed characters and the interplay between them and Ananda's parents (off-screen characters) is very good.
• 
  Samuel

  I recently re-read this after having just about completed my first year of English at UCL and I can conclude that reading it a second time after this experience has improved my opinion of it massively. Chaudhuri writes so wittily and vividly of an alienated student's life in London, capturing the minutiae of thought and existence with skill and humour. There are aspects of Ananda that are embarrassingly similar to myself. His interactions with the professors (and, indeed, the characters of the professors themselves) are uncannily resonant with my own. I continually return to this book for consolation when I am feeling dejected during my studies and it has certainly made my life a little more bearable.
• 
  Kkraemer

  This is a snapshot of a very lost and lonely young man who has come to London to read literature from his home in India. He is passionate about poetry, immersed in the language and vision of the 19th century poets even while he is proud of being very modern.
  
  He is alone.
  
  His only "friend" is his uncle, who came from India some 23 years before to work as a mid-management officer in a company. He, too, was alone, and he has filled his years with mailing money to relatives and others who needed help. They don't know him. He doesn't know them. They are his reason for living.
  
  The two men traverse parts of London, talking and eating and telling each other about literature.
  
  They are so alone that it aches.