... remains deliciously suspended in the present, avoiding the fate of recounting; our true reward is that we have a real-time immersion with every moment of reading. And after reaching the last sentence, we can go back to the beginning and start all over again, because no event, in Chaudhuri’s fiction, is ever really over.
... a beautiful meditation on memory ... The mood of the writing is more disorientated than dreamlike ... Chaudhuri does not use titles, names or numbers to separate the sections of his narrative. Instead there are generous spaces, including whole blank pages such as these. The effect is similar to that of reading someone’s notebook, intimate and fragmentary; but the impressions are not chronologically arranged, as they might be in an actual notebook. They circle round and double back on themselves in an artful way that shows the narrator sinking into a reckoning with Berlin’s past, which ends in a series of dizzy spells and an amnesia that includes his own name.
And were it not for the narrative’s clandestine hold, the reader too might grow weary of this vacillating companion. For Sojourn is indeed the most introspective—and perhaps disaffected—of Mr. Chaudhuri’s novels; a far cry from his early rich creations. Yet even here, vivid impressions are conveyed in often prosaic sentences and, more mysteriously, in the spaces between those sentences, which seem to resonate as rests do in a musical composition. (It is no coincidence that Mr. Chaudhuri is also a composer and a practitioner of Indian classical music).
As he traverses the city, its fractured lines and history, it is a pleasure to spend time in his company, like being transported to Berlin, without the hassle of airports and fares. There is the sense of a man on the cusp of some discovery, awaiting answers, to questions either habitual or profound. Where to buy a coat for the cold weather? And what is the meaning of life? Hilary Mantel has compared Chaudhuri to Proust, calling him 'a miniaturist' who specialises in the art of the moment. Sojourn is full of these artful moments, a short, compelling book where every encounter and remark seems charged with significance.
... everything feels dreamlike, illusory and yet attentively described. There’s a similar meandering and languid style that likes to survey minor day-to-day details, mingling and suffusing them with the wider significances of history ... I should say upfront that you don’t read his work for plot or purposefulness. He eschews conflict or confected drama; his literary preoccupation is best characterised as 'belonging and not belonging' ... the storyline, such as it is, is really a kind of accumulating diffusion ... The reading pleasure comes more in the observational turns of phrase ... Chaudhuri in this novel is not quite the master of Proust-like prose that he was in earlier work ... For a writer of this level of sensitivity to use such an image three times in so short a novel – and, frankly, to mangle it – speaks of a lack of attention ... This sounds a little as though I didn’t enjoy the book. I did. By the end, I had grown fond of the muted tone and the disconcerting uneventfulness. All the same, I can’t help but feel that the reader is seldom uppermost in Chaudhuri’s mind.
This disorientation is present from the outset and in the opening pages it threatens to derail Chaudhuri’s usually sure-footed prose. Faqrul’s arrival at the narrator’s talk provokes a flurry of similes, none of which quite land as they ought to...Is this a reflection of the narrator’s shaky mental state or just subpar writing? ... No matter. The prose soon regains its footing and as the narrator meanders around Berlin, visiting department stores, museums and an old-style dancehall, the novel weaves its befuddling spell ... We’re left with an impression of a man untethered in reality, but also of a world drained of significance, of consequence, of strong feelings or at least their outward expression.
This book is whittled yet dense, like an axe head without a handle. It might leave one uneasy, which is the point. The present, ever-present, can feel devouringly eternal.
... the book is only physically slight. It grips the mind, as much with appreciation as with frustration, and teases one into parsing what is real or autofiction, what is changeless or transient. A reader may even enjoy feeling a bit at sea, like the narrator: 'I’ve lost my bearings—not in the city; in its history' ... A masterful writer in his own subtle, thoughtful, demanding genre.
