Returning to London, he takes on a part in a TV soap opera and the book leaves its reader on the brink of the 1979 general election (the defeat of Jim Callaghan's government on a motion of no confidence is specifically mentioned later in the novel).

Through his work with two theatre companies, Karim gets to know new people from completely different backgrounds, like the working-class Welshman Terry, who is an active Trotskyist and wants him to join the party, or Karim's lover Eleanor, who is upper middle class but pretends to be working class.

Mixing with the people surrounding Eleanor and Pyke (a strange theatre director), he realises that they are speaking a different language, because they received a good education, which was not valued in the suburbs.

Due to the orality in The Buddha, the historical events, and the many dialogues full of colloquialism, the reader gets the impression of realism.

It was, I'm afraid, people in Hyde Park playing bongos with their hands; there was also the keyboard on The Doors' "Light My Fire".

Furthermore, London seems to be the perfect setting for the protagonists' "often painful growth towards maturity through a range of conflicts and dilemmas, social, sexual and political."

[1] In 2009 Wasafiri magazine placed the novel on its list of 25 Most Influential Books published in the previous quarter-century.