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...