Home and Exile by Chinua Achebe. So deceptively clear, like the clarity of light on this brilliant May morning that cajoles you into thinking reality is right before your eyes. Achebe's text makes you blink and look again.
Manhattan disappears as the train follows the Hudson upriver.
The world of purple hills and green pastures is speckled with small towns in need of jobs and a lick of paint, dotted, too, with leafy weekend houses for well-off urban refugees. The taxi drivers, idling at the Rhinecliff station, squabble over who shall have the fare. The winner drives the final 15 minutes to the house tucked up a path beyond Bard College's main entrance. Achebe, in his 70th year, has come to know as much about home and exile as any man can, much more than he would have wished. More than eight million copies have been sold worldwide.