At times a figure peripheral to the narrative is introduced for no apparent reason other than their celebrity. Forster to the actor Nigel Havers (who played Lord Arthur Lindsay in Chariots of Fire) and the journalist Darryl D’Monte. These include Meredith Dewey, Dhondy’s Cambridge tutor Mala, his “teenage sweetheart” and later his wife, and a host of well-known personalities, from the writers Clive James, Adil Jussawalla and E.M. Unlike in a conventional roman à clef, where characters are fictional representations of real-life figures, with their names and other important details altered, Cambridge Company features for the most part real-life people with their real names. ![]() ![]() ![]() Indeed, ‘semi-autobiographical’ is putting it mildly. The narrator shares the author’s name and the broad facts of his biography. But while its principal theme is the author’s undergraduate years at the University of Cambridge, the narrative often jumps back in time to Poona or Bombay (as they then were), and occasionally forward to London. Cambridge Company, in chronological terms, is the bridge between the two previous books. London Company (2012), set in the late 1960s, follows the narrator from Leicester to London, where he joins the British Black Panthers. ![]() Poona Company, published in 1980, is a set of interlinked stories inspired by the author’s boyhood in the titular city. Cambridge Company completes what Farrukh Dhondy calls his ‘semi-autobiographical trilogy’.
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