Calcutta : two years in the city / Amit Chaudhuri

A spellbinding book that combines memoir, reportage, and history in an intimate, richly sensual portrait of the city of Calcutta. Amit Chaudhuri has been consistently praised for the beauty and subtle power of his writing and for the ways in which he makes "place" as complex a character as his men and women. Now, he brings these gifts to a chronicle of two years in which he made Calcutta his home. In a mesmerizing narrative he takes us into the heart of a metropolis relatively untouched by the currents of globalization but possessed of a "self renewing way...of apprehending life." The narrative moves through the city's vibrant avenues and its derelict alleyways, introduces us to its homeless and its well-heeled, describes its architecture and food, its sounds and smells, its past and present politics, and makes abundantly clear the complex reasons for the author's passionate attachment to the place and its people. It is an unusually beguiling, eye-opening journey that evokes all that is most particular and extraordinary about the city.