The Cat's Table, by Michael Ondaatje

A young boy—only eleven—is sent alone by ship from Colombo to London where he will join the mother he hasn’t seen in four or five years. He is nominally supervised by a woman his uncle knows, but since she is in First Class he rarely sees her. For his meals he is seated at the Cat’s Table, the one farthest away from the Captain’s Table and clearly reserved for the least important passengers. There he meets two other boys his age, Ramadhin and Cassius, who will become his constant companions o...