A three-part story collection moving between the subcontinent and the West, retelling Hamlet's gravedigger Yorick as a jester in old Denmark, following Christopher Columbus's years of courting Queen Isabella for patronage, and tracing immigrant friendships and marriages such as those of Chekov and Zulu and the porter Mecir.
Books mentioned in East, West (6)
The Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien: “'Do you like Tolkien?' ... 'J.R.R. Tolkien,' said Zulu. 'The Lord of the Rings.'”
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce: “to please her I ploughed my way through Finnegans Wake twice”
Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson by G.I. Gurdjieff: “G.I. Gurdjieff, author of Beelzebub's Tales and guru to, among others, Aldous Huxley, Katherine Mansfield and J.B. Priestley”
Paul et Virginie by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre: “as she called Bernardin de St Pierre's Paul et Virginie; and insisted that I read it”
Hamlet by William Shakespeare: “in the Hamlet of William Shakespeare, the morbid prince seems unaware of his own father's real name”
Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus: “contradicted by no less an authority than Saxo-Grammaticus's History of the Danes!”