Author(s): Amit Chaudhuri

Novel | Germany

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.

'Chaudhuri has already proved that he can write better than just about anybody of his generation.' - Jonathan Coe

Author Biography: Amit Chaudhuri is the author of seven novels, including Friend of My Youth, as well as three books of essays, two of poems, and a collection of short stories. He has been awarded the Commonwealth Literature Prize, the Betty Trask award, the Encore Prize, the LA Times Book Prize and the Sahitya Akademi Award. 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.