Sojourn, Amit Chaudhuri
Sojourn, Amit Chaudhuri
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Sojourn

Author: Amit Chaudhuri

Narrator: Shawn K. Jain

Unabridged: 1 hr 50 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 11/29/2022


Synopsis

An Indian writer has come to Berlin as a visiting professor. This is his second sojourn in the city, which seems strange, and also strangely familiar, to him.

Faqrul, a friendly Bangladeshi poet living in exile, takes him up—then disappears. The visiting writer is increasingly adrift in a city that not long ago was two cities, each cut off from the other, much as the new unified city is cut off from the divided one of the past.

To him, the new world of the twenty-first century, with its endless commodities from all over the place and no prospect of any sort of historical transformation, appears to exist in a state of amnesiac suspense. He gets involved with a woman, Birgit. He begins to miss his classes. He blacks out in the street. People are worried.

Amit Chaudhuri's Sojourn is a dramatic and disconcerting work of fiction, a book about the present as it slips into the past, a picture of a city and of a troubled mind, a historical novel about an ostensibly post-historical time, a story of haunting. Here, as in his earlier work, Chaudhuri pries open fictional form to explore questions of public and private life in ways that are both bold and subtle.

About Amit Chaudhuri

Amit Chaudhuri is the author of many novels, including, Friend of My Youth. Among his other published works are collections of short stories, poetry, and essays, as well as the nonfiction Calcutta and a critical study of D. H. Lawrence's poetry. He has received the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Betty Trask Award, the Encore Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Sahitya Akademi Award, among other accolades. Chaudhuri is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and holds the titles of professor of contemporary literature at the University of East Anglia in England and professor of creative writing at Ashoka University in India. In addition, he is a singer in the North Indian classical tradition and a composer and performer in a project that brings together the raga, blues, and jazz with a variety of other musical traditions. In 2017 he received the Sangeet Samman from the government of West Bengal for his contribution to Indian classical music.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Adam on August 24, 2022

I quite liked this oblique, melancholy little novel of displacement. It never quite catches fire, but the 125 pages fly by and the writing is lovely throughout......more

Goodreads review by Janelle on September 04, 2022

The narrator of this novella is a visiting professor in Berlin. It’s a pleasant mysterious read as he meets people and explores, observing the history, different culture (I googled German toilets!), the different types of people particularly others that are displaced. He seems to get less sure of hi......more

Goodreads review by Atri on December 29, 2022

I tap out notes on the piano. I can't play, but its keys ring true. I go to the desk, press down on it. There are apartments opposite. Rather than being an observer, I tend to enter the lives of things I see. I'm now in that building. Mimicking myself, I look back from there to this window. I become......more

Goodreads review by Morgan on September 16, 2022

A great, slim read. It was slow and pensive with no plot. The narrator travels to Berlin as a visiting professor and during his time tries to connect with the city (both past and present) and some of the people. It reminded me of the Patrick Modiano I had read as a meditation of people just existing......more

Goodreads review by Joseph on January 10, 2025

3.5 stars This quiet, spare story about an Indian writer's academic sojourn in Berlin in the early 2000s turned out to be a sombre way to start the year. The book has an unfinished feel owing to the fact that the narrator's own mental state seems to be unravelling as his time in the city nears an end......more