Benares in Babylon

Benares takes place over one evening, an evening in which the narrator joins his friend Mayi on a trip to Port-Louis. Their mission? To pick up two prostitutes with the money Mayi won playing poker the night before. This journey from and then back to Benares, the small Mauritian village in which they live, becomes symbolic of everything in the lives of these two young men. Very little happens and the travelling is done as much in the mind as it is on the road. Out of the simplest of journeys, Barlen Pyamootoo has constructed a beautiful, immediate tale of remote lives, vividly evoking his birthplace and portraying, with subtle humour and pathos, the universal need to connect and share a sense of one's place in the world. The result is an ambiguous, touching and troubling debut novel by a writer of exceptional talent.