Chaudhuri, A: Calcutta

the literary and intellectual - and the personal, for this is where his parents live and his father is fading. Chaudhuri's Calcutta has a different scope and intention to Suketu Mehta's Maximum City (about Mumbai) and to William Dalrymple's City of Djinns (about Delhi), but like those books, it succeeds brilliantly in making sense of a place few of us can know.' -- Anthony Sattin Observer 'Chaudhuri concentrates on the everyday and there's something admirable about the calm confidence of his unelectric narratives - of buying some vintage windows, of a street food vendor or a friend of the family. His India isn't only the exotic other we're still so invested in, and his truths, quietly disclosed, are highly valuable.' -- Paul Laity Prospect 'Concussed by the noise of the new and beguiled by echoes of the past, Chaudhuri maintains his novelists eye and ear for Calcutta's character and citizens. He combines the serendipity of the flaneur with the sensitivity of the social historian.' The Times 'What's a memoir when you don't have memories? Amit Chaudhuri brings his literary imagination to create his childhood home from scratch. Chaudhuri picks up the exploration of unreliable memory where Proust and Nabokov left off.' Stylist 'Chaudhuri's trysts with the past are entrancing in their lyricism, and simply stunning in their intelligence and percipience,' Independent 'A forensic portrayal - that crackles with honesty and swoons with tenderness - of a city at the heart of India's change. One that resists and embraces it in equal measure.' Monocle Magazine 'This personal account of two years living there, 2009-2011, is written in typically elegant prose.' Daily Telegraph 'Like its structure, the book's meticulous phrasing and seductive charm echo the allure of a self-concious city whose history is not to be found in libraries. Already a poet, musician, critic and novelist, in Calcutta Amit Chaudhuri bravely - and brilliantly - embraces new form that is, in many ways, the expression of the city itself.' -- John Keay Literary Review