A to J: The Wandering Jew

Post 9/11 a young Jewish New York architect, Saul Wasserman, recently separated after a failed marriage, takes a European coach tour to forget his sorrows but finds himself caught up not only in romantic encounters, but also religious and political antagonisms. Onboard the bus is an assortment of travellers: an American fundamentalist pastor and wife, English Marxist, Canadian astronomer, New Zealand art historian, American liberal theologian and an Arab doctor. The lives of these people weave in and out at various points as the tour takes them through all the main European cities, but it is the clash between the Jew and the slightly enigmatic Arab, one of the central engines of the story, that carries the narrative to crisis point by the end of the tale.