A Foreigner is the story of a young man who is detached, almost estranged, a man who sees himself as a stranger, an alien wherever he goes or lives- in Kenya where he was born, in UK and USA where he was a student and in India where he finally settles down. His detachment transcends barriers of geography, nationality and culture. It propels him from one predicament to another, sucking in the wake several people, including June; an attractive American with whom he had a short lived but passionate affair.

The transitoriness associated with the word 'foreigner' permeates the novel and is handled with remarkable maturity reminding the reader of epoch-making The Outsider by Albert Camus. The protagonist's anguish at the meaninglessness of the human condition and the eventual release from the anxieties of life through karmayoga, the principle of action without attachment, add to the aesthetics of the work.