Homer in Flight

"Run, you little bitch, run. You could run as far as you want, you can' escape." His uncle's words ring in Homer Santokie's ears as his plane gains altitude and Trinidad falls away below. He has escaped. His destination: Toronto. Homer trades a basement in Ajax for a Dixie high rise, a factory job for a position as a Hamilton school librarian. Marrying Vashti and moving into her sister's house in Burlington, becoming a father, publishing his book -- these successes should win Homer peace and security. But he craves more. Hilarious and poignant, Homer in Flight draws a brilliant picture of a man evading one imaginary crisis after another. Homer veers from bravery to bravado, from jollity to gut-wrenching anxiety and confusion. Articulate and annoyed, he wrestles mightily with the benign reality of his new life.

Rabindranath Maharaj, a Trinidadian teacher and journalist, wrote several of the stories in the Interloper during the year he spent in Fredericton. He now writes and teaches in Toronto.