The title of Paul Theroux's new book [The London Embassy] is rather misleading. The anonymous narrator indeed works at the American Embassy but his work takes him out of that grotesque building in Grosvenor Square and allows him to wander all round London. In fact London at times seems to be the real hero of this collection of short stories. The city is always present. Sometimes it is a rather strange, foreign city—not so much a capital of an Empire but a far off, distant colonial outpost. This is because Mr Theroux is, like his unnamed hero, an American. It is also one of the pleasures of the book, seeing such a familiar city seem somehow strange and foreign.

The London Embassy is a collection of short stories … but it can be read as a novel if one begins at the beginning and carries on. The hero appears in all the stories. It is the same man who narrated Mr Theroux's highly successful The Consul's File…. (p. 601)

[Theroux's] ability to look into the lives of people is what makes The London Embassy so fascinating. The background here is not exotic Asia, as in The Consul's File, but hum-drum, every day London, albeit a London tinged with espionage—the hero is a sort of spy—corruption, and the Brixton Riots.

The author is a New Englander, and although he has lived for many years in London he is still able to look at the city as if it were new and foreign. Some readers may dislike the lack of an exotic setting but it is a far more difficult job to look under your own nose at the ordinary and come up with something different. (p. 602)