Indrajit Garai

On a night Arnault is reading in his cell, he is unexpectedly taken to the warden’s office. At age 42, Arnault is serving a 25-year sentence for first-degree murder. In year 23 of his imprisonment, evidence finally reveals his claims of innocence are the truth. Released, he becomes "The Man Without Shelter," one of many homeless in Paris.

Lucy watches in disbelief as the homeless man who rescued her from assault with a knife at an ATM is handcuffed and taken into custody. She knows it is not the first time she has seen this man. It won’t be the last interaction between Arnault and the attorney.

The novella is set in Paris but is a story that could occur in any number of cities or towns around the world. It is a story behind news headlines, photographs, or films of people experiencing homelessness. A story that goes beyond the scenes of shelters, migrant tent communities, food banks, and mobile soup kitchens. A story based on the realities of far too many. It introduces us to Arnault and others he begins to interact with and the choices complicated by laws, the laws created to offer help, hope, and a way forward.

It is much more than Arnault’s story or Lucy’s story. It is society’s truth.… (mer)

Trigger Warnings: Homelessness, suicide, murder, mentions of abuse, sex trafficking, rape

Arnault has just been released from prison after two decades when new evidence finally proved he didn’t commit the crime. Lucy is a young lawyer who is determined to help Arnault in his journey to full freedom.

The writing in this novel was a bit different for me. I’ve read a lot of Japanese translated books and some Dutch and Swedish, but I haven’t read many from France. That being said, the writing does dive into a lot of French politics and policies, especially about the homeless/unhoused population.

As a librarian, it was interesting to me to see how Paris’ homeless population was portrayed in this novel. The unhoused are many of my frequent patrons, so I hear and try to help with their struggles as much as I can. The circles one must overcome can’t be done without help: to get an ID, you have to have an address for 3 months, to have an address, you have to have a job in order to pay for address, to have a job, you must have an ID - and so the circle continues.

Indrajit Garai does an amazing job at giving you characters who you root for page after page. Life wasn’t easy on Arnault, but he kept going and kept pushing and I wanted to know how the universe was finally going to give back to him what he deserved. The man had a tent where he lived with a geese couple and their chick and was content with it! And then with Lucy, even though she was on the complete opposite lifestyle as Arnault, we saw a lot of the world where people don’t care and were only out for themselves. I kept rooting for her that her eyes would be open to this other world (homeless/unhoused/migraint) and that it would change her for the better.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and will be recommending it to a lot of my library coworkers for sure. It’s not the greatest, happy-go-lucky book on the shelf, but it shows honesty and a life of someone who has been down and just trying to get back up on their feet honestly.… (mer)

The Man Without Shelter follows the exploits of Arnault, a Frenchman released from wrongful imprisonment after 23 years’ incarceration. Early on, the story focuses on Arnault and his troubles, but as the narrative progresses the point of view shifts over to Lucy, an idealistic attorney who gets involved in Arnault’s legal dealings. She’s a character who wants to do the right and ethical thing, but really learns her high idealism from Arnault’s example.

At story’s outset, Arnault is released from the penitentiary and thrust out onto the Paris streets just before midnight. He’s paid in Euros for his labor while in prison (the only French currency he’s familiar with is Francs), but has nowhere to go, and no valid state ID. He needs both of these things before he can secure employment in a city full to overflowing with refugees who also need work. He could seek a homeless shelter for his permanent address, but with so many homeless people living in Paris, these shelters have waiting lists a mile long.

In this way, author Indrajit Garai steeps his readers in the present-day pitfalls and hardships faced by the homeless refugees crowding Paris. They’re preyed upon by immigrant gangs who deal in drugs, violence, and human traffic; the state has attempted to fashion a bureaucracy to deal with the problems in a humane way, but its shortcomings become the niche that private foundations try to fill.

Garai clearly wants us to witness these social ills in detail. His story is a simple framework to illuminate them. Lucy, the young idealistic lawyer, works at clearing Arnault’s name from prior suspicion; meanwhile Arnault is spectacularly rising above his difficulties in a daring and much-filmed rescue of a child hanging from a balcony four stories above a Paris street. Arnault and Lucy don’t communicate through the months during which he trains and becomes a firefighter and rescue worker while she works doggedly on his behalf in court.

Large sections of The Man Without Shelter read like a social history and critique of conditions facing the homeless and refugees now huddled in Europe. One gets the feeling Garai has encountered the ill effects of these conditions by close, personal observation. Garai, an American citizen born in India, and now living in Paris, wrote the novella in English (there’s no translator’s credit), and his style contains some odd, gentle missteps one might expect from a Francophone writing in English. Many of the nouns are plural, for instance, even when it isn’t needed.

That is a quibble, however. This book is a spare, straightforward narrative using some fairly plain plot devices to frame its larger theme. The distress of these people, beset on all sides by ill fortune, official indifference, and criminal manipulation, must be seen and addressed. This story is a framework for doing it. One admires Garai for his impulse, but this book lacks the soul or the gritty mise en scène of Garai’s touching prior novel, 2019’s The Bridge of Little Jeremy.… (mer)

A touching tale of a young boy's battle to save his debt ridden family and prevent his mother going to prison because she is unable to pay.

Jeremy is an interesting character and through his eyes we are treated to a marvelous view of Paris through the seasons.

The story is engaging and entertaining. It is an easy read which has elements of danger to keep it interesting and a variety of minor characters that Jeremy interacts with to maintain that interest.

Some nice twists along the way and the ending is an unexpected emotional payoff for multiple reasons… (mer)