In 1999 Amit Chaudhuri moved back to Calcutta the city in which he was born. It was a place he had loved in his youth & the place he had made his name writing about. But upon his return he discovered that the Calcutta of his imagination had receded & another had taken its place. Lyrical observant & profound Calcutta is a personal account of two years (2009-2011) spent in one of the least known
- yet greatest
- cities of our time by one of our leading novelists. Using the historic elections of 2011 as a fulcrum Chaudhuri looks back to the nineteenth century when the city burst with a new vitality & towards the twenty-first when
- utterly changed
- it seems to be on the verge of another turn. Along the way he evokes all that is most particular & extraordinary. From the homeless & the working class to the old declining haute bourgeois; from the new malls & hotels to old houses being destroyed by developers; from politicians on their way out to the citys fitful attempts to embrace globalisation Calcutta brings a multifarious universe to life.