A masterful and entirely fresh portrait of great hopes and dashed dreams
in a mythical city from a major new literary voice.
Everything that could possibly be wrong with a city was wrong with
Calcutta.
When Kushanava Choudhury arrived in New Jersey at the age of 12, he had
already migrated halfway around the world four times. After graduating
from Princeton, he moved back to the world which his immigrant parents
had abandoned, to a city built between a river and a swamp, where the
moisture-drenched air swarms with mosquitos after sundown.
Once the capital of the British Raj, and then India's industrial and
cultural hub, by 2001 Calcutta was clearly past its prime. Why, his
relatives beseeched him, had he returned? Surely, he could have moved to
Delhi, Bombay or Bangalore, where a new Golden Age of consumption was
being born. Yet 15 million people still lived in Calcutta.
Working for the Statesman, its leading English newspaper, Kushanava
Choudhury found the streets of his childhood unchanged by time. Shouting
hawkers still overran the footpaths, fish-sellers squatted on bazaar
floors; politics still meant barricades and bus burnings, while
Communist ministers travelled in motorcades.
Sifting through the chaos for the stories that never make the papers,
Kushanava Choudhury paints a soulful, compelling portrait of the
everyday lives that make Calcutta. Written with humanity, wit and
insight, The Epic City is an unforgettable portrait of an era, and a
city which is a world unto itself.
