‘Odysseus Abroad’ by Amit Chaudhuri   (2015)  –   204 pages

If I were to describe ‘Odysseus Abroad’ for what it is, a pleasantly uneventful novel, you would probably by now be well on your way to another place on the Internet, and I couldn’t blame you.

The plot here is beside the point.  Nearly half of the novel is taken up with a “pointless ramble” in London by Bengali graduate student Ananda and his uncle Radhesh during which they stop for tea and later visit a book shop.

As happens with close family members, the uncle and nephew often annoy each other. The two men are like a comedy team with pointed and wicked repartee about nearly everything including the rest of their family members, each other’s sex lives, Indian versus English literature, and restaurant etiquette.

Ananda has strong opinions on the relative merits of Indian and English literature.  He finds only a few English poets helpful to his own work: Edward Thomas, Geoffrey Hill, Philip Larkin.  He considers the Mahabharata to be the “equal of all of Shakespeare and more”.  I particularly enjoyed his views on Thomas Hardy:

“and the later, almost comical tragedies of Thomas Hardy, in which things went relentlessly wrong, as in a Tom and Jerry cartoon.”

‘Odysseus Abroad’ fully embodies Chaudhuri’s  views.  For the last thirty-five years the novel ‘Midnight’s Children’ by Salman Rushdie and its many successors and imitators have dominated the world’s view of Indian literature.  All Indian literature was now supposed to be big, loud, and bold.  There was no longer room for the small, the quiet, or the subtle.

Enter Amit Chaudhuri and his “refutation of the spectacular”.  He has set about to write novels that are deliberately low key.  In order for a novel to be entertaining, it does not have to be explosive or overly dramatic.  Perhaps it is more about noticing the little things that happen every day that make the day odd and amusing. Also Chaudhuri’s novels do not deal with a monolithic India but instead with an India consisting of hundreds of different groups of people, each with its own particular culture.   Some of these cultures have existed long before England appeared.

To fully appreciate ‘Odysseus Abroad’ requires a change in mindset.  It is more like a jaunt around the neighborhood or a bike ride rather than a world changer.   Sharp conversation, some humor, subtle insights.  Listening to the audio of this book twice in order to fully appreciate it, I spent a lot of time with this novel in which not much happens.  That time was pleasant enough

Grade: B+