Calcutta: Two Years in the City ~ Paperback ~ Amit Chaudhuri

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 and the place he had made his name writing about. But upon his return he discovered that the Calcutta of his imagination had receded and another had taken its place. Lyrical, observant and 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, and 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 and extraordinary. From the homeless and the working class to the old, declining haute bourgeois; from the new malls and hotels to old houses being destroyed by developers; from politicians on their way out to the city's fitful attempts to embrace globalisation, Calcutta brings a multifarious universe to life.Author BiographyAMIT CHAUDHURI is the author of five highly acclaimed novels: A Strange and Sublime Address, Afternoon Raag, Freedom Song, A New World, and The Immortals. He is also a poet, an acclaimed musician, and a highly regarded critic, and has edited The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia. Amit Chaudhuri lives in Calcutta and Norwich.