Luck Has an Orange Hue

The book’s success rested that doubt at least.

A sometime New Yorker, Freudenberger had taken up temporary residence in cities like Bangkok and Delhi — where during one of her stays she taught English at a school. Her stories — personal and those of her imagination — are thus rooted in scattered urban settings.

At a reading of her stories last year in Chennai, Freudenberger didn’t choose a story set in India, she went for the one in Thailand. ‘‘I was terrified,’’ she said, ‘‘someone would point out a mistake.’’ It’s a terror that most writers in a globalised world are beginning to share.

Freudenberger is part of the growing circle of urban globetrotters for whom home is a shifting space and disorientation a feeling that stays on even at home, but there is a lot that’s American about her that won’t just fade away. Which is probably why her characters remain essentially American, whatever their surroundings. They are always representatives of Americans Abroad. And their stories are not essays in cultural dissection. ‘‘I’m not a sociologist and I haven’t stayed in other countries long enough to write like that,’’ she clarified on debut. ‘‘In my stories mainly I write about expat Americans who may be in other countries but they get together and make little islands — which is true of other communities too, like Indians in America. But that’s not me though — for one, I didn’t have so much money when I was travelling.’’

That could change soon though.