Benares and In Babylon.Benares and In Babylon by Barlen Pyamootoo (Canongate, ISBN ISBN abbr. International Standard Book Number ISBN International Standard Book Number ISBN n abbr (= International Standard Book Number) → ISBN m 1 84195 337 7) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The two small novellas This literature-related list is incomplete; you can help by [ expanding it]. This is a selected list of novellas that have gained fame and/or critical and public acclaim. that comprise this book can both be described as road stories in which little happens but much is suggested. In the first, a group of friends from Benares, a tiny fishing village in the south of Mauritius, win some money in a card game and decide to take a trip to the capital Port-Louis. Here they find a couple of prostitutes and, on the taxi journey back to Benares, the group swap stories, hopes and dreams. In particular, they discuss their village's namesake name·sake n. One that is named after another. [From the phrase for the name's sake.] namesake Noun , the sacred Indian city of Benares (now Varanasi), where devout de·vout adj. de·vout·er, de·vout·est 1. Devoted to religion or to the fulfillment of religious obligations. See Synonyms at religious. 2. Displaying reverence or piety. 3. Hindus go to die. To the friends, this coincidence of names symbolizes the exotic possibilities that lie beyond their remote, impoverished village. In the second piece, In Babylon, an unnamed narrator NARRATOR. A pleader who draws narrs serviens narrator, a sergeant at law. Fleta, 1. 2, c. 37. Obsolete. travels through Iraq just after the first Gulf War. As he passes burned-out tanks and negotiates countless roadblocks, he meditates on the lives he sees: ordinary people touched by global upheavals far beyond their control. In what is perhaps the only 'action' of the piece, the narrator is robbed by a group of polite, apologetic youths who describe their penury pen·u·ry n. 1. Extreme want or poverty; destitution. 2. Extreme dearth; barrenness or insufficiency. [Middle English penurie, from Latin and list the countries they'd like to escape to. In both these drifting, dreamlike narratives the overwhelming sense is that life is elsewhere and most things are beyond human understanding. Muddling through, the author suggests, is the best we can hope for but, in our confusion, we sometimes stumble upon connections we had not hoped to find. There is, he says, beauty to be found 'even on roads that lead nowhere'. Rating GOOD PW www.canongate.net |
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