India, Jan. 31 -- In Bangalore in 2017, TJS George pulled out an old black-and-white photograph of a Vietnamese woman on a motorcycle. "If you go to Vietnam, remember me to her. She was very important to me in those days," he told his son. "You've spoiled it," his son Jeet said. "You shouldn't have said that. It's better to be silent about some things."

Jeet Thayil's The Elsewhereans is an olio of family memoir, autofiction and about two dozen photographs. He calls it a documentary novel.

His family had "lived Elsewhere too long"; between them, in Bombay, Patna, New York, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Bangalore, Paris, Berlin... They had "become Elsewhereans."

The book chronicles life on the move. It opens with an old photograph of a young Ammu ...