A natural successor to The Consul’s File, this book
takes the American narrator from Ayer Hitam to a new
post in the London Embassy. As he once observed with
cool, amused eye the British and Malays, he can now
observe the British and their endless treasure trove
of eccentricities on home ground. And the Americans
in the embassy are no less curious. There is a man
who is beggared when he inherits a title, the
embassy Minister who is obsessed with rage at a male
employee who wears an earring, an Arab who has come
to London to rob a certain tomb, a woman who cycles
all the way to Yorkshire to perform a peculiar
revenge, and dozens of others who nurse some secret
vagary -- and, with each, Theroux produces a
surprising illumination. |
