Sojourn

The new novel about the present, the past, and the slippage between private and public life-from a writer who has 'like Proust, mastered the art of the moment.' (Hilary Mantel) An unnamed man arrives in Berlin as a visiting professor. It is a place fused with Western history and cultural fracture lines. He moves along its streets and pavements; through its department stores, museums and restaurants. He befriends Faqrul, an enigmatic exiled poet, and Birgit, a woman with whom he shares the vagaries of attraction. He tries to understand his white-haired cleaner. Berlin is a riddle-he becomes lost not only in the city but in its legacy. Sealed off in his own solitude, and as his visiting professorship passes, the narrator awaits transformation and meaning. Ultimately, he starts to understand that the less sure he becomes of his place in the moment, the more he knows his way.

Amit Chaudhuri is the acclaimed author of six novels, including Odysseus Abroad and A Strange and Sublime Address, and two books of essays. He has been awarded the Commonwealth Literature Prize, the Betty Trask Award, the Encore Award, the LA Times Book Prize and the Sahitya Akademi Award, among other accolades. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the English Association, and was a judge of the Man Booker International Prize. Currently he is Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia.