ISOLARION A Different Oxford Journey by James Attlee

University of Chicago Press, £12

ISOLARION TAKES ITS title from a 15th-century device: a map that isolates an area in order to present it in detail.

The area that James Attlee isolates is the Cowley Road in Oxford. A street outside the city centre as varied in its physical and cultural appearance as the university’s dreaming spires are uniform, it is also Attlee’s home.

A desire for adventure and understanding leads him to walk the streets with a tape recorder, investigating the world upon his doorstep. An atheist, Attlee frames his journey as a pilgrimage and embarks on it with only one certainty: “The end of the journey will not be as you imagine.”

On the surface, Isolarion plays with the thrill of voyeurism. We follow Attlee behind closed doors into unknown worlds: from New Age immersion in a flotation tank to the brash neon-lit world of the porn shop, to the smoky, hypnotic experience of a reggae concert. Such alternative culture is counterbalanced by equally eccentric visits to a robe-makers, a gospel church, a car manufacturing plant. These combine to create fascinating social history.

But Isolarion is more than a piece of observational journalism. Attlee’s encounters lead to thoughtful investigations of the human condition. A visit to a jewellers allows a digression on love and love tokens. A vivid, sensual description of a street carnival becomes an insight into multiculturalism, and blends into a meditation on the nature of family.

In a lesser writer such use of anecdote could give way to whimsy, presenting quirky characters as allegory, tailoring encounters to fit a preconceived moral philosophy. But not here. Attlee seems often surprised by his own connections and diversions. He also has a keen awareness that his investigations border on intrusion, and struggles with his role as observer and narrator.

Attlee describes himself as a former musician, and his writing reflects this. The prose is subtle and engaging. He creates a harmony of varied voices, as his observations are interspersed with interviews, and literary quotations, leaning heavily on Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy.

As in any structured composition, a recurrent theme emerges. Surprisingly, amid all this colour, life and local history, it is one of external threat — war. This recurs in several encounters and anecdotes most memorably that of a young Albanian man who asserts that “asylum seekers are just like other people. We are just less lucky.”

No less affecting is Attlee’s discomfort over the warlike computer games that his son plays with his Pakistani neighbour. Attlee clearly struggles to reconcile living within a multicultural enclave with the wider atrocities of the modern world. In a digression on the nature of terrorist attacks he succinctly cuts through political cant with the observation: “the instant, public reduction of human beings to dust is at the heart of the war”.

Isolarion uses the microcosm of Cowley Road to take us into the “otherness” of disparate cultures only to reveal that the other is not so alien after all. Through observation and comparison, of ritual, belief and family, Attlee reinforces the common needs of humanity.

Ultimately, the atheist on his pilgrimage weaves together a subtle, understated tale of spiritual survival: peace and understanding come from an investigation of where we are. In an age in which air travel opens up the world, and holidays are to escape the mundane, Attlee encourages us to look at the riches on our doorstep. In an age where there is such hysteria over terrorism and immigration, it is important to understand our lands, in all their diversity. The end of our journey as humankind is not known, but Isolarionprovides an invaluable guide to how to progress along the way.

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