Questions of Travel: A Novel
After his human-rights activist wife is slaughtered with her little son in Sri Lanka, Ravi flees to Sydney, Australia, where he faces prejudice as he applies for asylum and gets a job in computers with a big travel company. Laura works for the company as a tourism writer, having returned home from London, where Australia, with stars, aborigines, and cities so secondhand they need the outback, is regarded as exotic. More than all the multiple personal intricacies in Ravi’s and Laura’s alternating narratives, the contemporary work scene will grab readers—the corporate drivel (Moral indignation is not managerial), the office politics with the daily e-mails, the technician who installs new software and cannot explain how to use it. Best of all is the wry take on tourists. As a travel writer, Laura knows they do not want ordinary life: That is what they were on holiday from. Forget the unwilling travelers like Ravi, the soldiers, and the millions made homeless. This ironic, contemporary view of finding home makes for heartfelt drama. --Hazel Rochman