Sublime

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Slowly we became—all four of us—American. For Bhupendra and Bhanu this would become clearer with each visit to India or Fiji. Although they tried to blend in, to do as the locals did, the mask was less and less perfect. The changes were physiological: they could not drink the water, had to be careful about what they ate, were bothered by pollution.

On her fourteenth birthday, he gives her a bowdlerized translation of Ovid’s Metamorphosis.

Taken together, the measures were a huge success. America's class of foreign students arriving in 1963, the one that Bhupendra was considering joining, would be nearly forty thousand strong: four times as many as in 1950. And each year, it would continue to grow.

‘You’re our longest-serving contributor,’ said Carleton, flinching at the bang. ‘Our most admired. Indeed I should say our most popular.’ I’m beginning to speak like him, he thought: Thomas Hart is catching, that’s the trouble. ‘I’ve often heard it said that it’s a consolation – that’s the general feeling, as I said to the board – to wake on Thursd