He saw his uncle once or twice a week. They got on each other’s nerves, but had grown fond of the frisson. He was Ananda’s sole friend in London-and Ananda his. ‘Friend’ was right; because his uncle was capable of being neither uncle, nor father, nor brother. Ananda’s uncle, Rangamama, is an eccentric bachelor who has taken early retirement and lives off his pension in a squalid bedsit in Belsize Park. His habits are angular-he rarely bathes, and devours paranormal stories-and his personality combative. Ananda, by contrast, is fragile, nervous and romantic. Uncle and nephew circle around their past, walk the streets of London and find in each other, an unspoken solace. A retelling of the story of Odysseus and Telemachus, Odysseus Abroad is a novel about a young man and an old man, about friendship, loneliness and love. Written in a voice at once tender and ribald, wry and unsentimental, this is Amit Chaudhuri’s most extraordinary novel yet.
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