Chowringhee - Softcover

Sankar

Softcover

ISBN 10: 014310103X ISBN 13: 9780143101031

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2007

Synopsis

This is the Indian classic, published in English for the first time. 'Here, day and night were interchangeable. The immaculately dressed Chowringhee, radiant in her youth, had just stepped on to the floor at the nightclub.'Set in 1950s Calcutta, "Chowringhee" is a sprawling saga of the intimate lives of managers, employees and guests at one of Calcutta's largest hotels, the Shahjahan. Shankar, the newest recruit, recounts the stories of several people whose lives come together in the suites, restaurants, bars and back rooms of the hotel. As both observer and participant in the events, he reveals the unfulfilled desires, broken dreams, callous manipulations and unbidden tragedies of those who work and live there - the enigmatic manager Marco Polo, the debonair receptionist Sata Bose, and the tragic hostess Karabi Guha, among others. What unfolds is not just the story of individual lives but also the glittering chronicle of a lost metropolis.

About this title

Review:

`[A] terrific Bengali page-turner... [A] classic of post- and pre-independence Calcutta life... Suffice to say it's an utter treat... [Chowringhee] might, to many eyes, supply more unashamed, reader-transporting enjoyment than any other fiction of the year.'
--Boyd Tonkin, Independent --The Independent

'Given the frenetic energy and ebullience of recent fiction coming out of India, it is something of a relief to rediscover the pleasures of an absorbing story simply told. Chowringhee has that essential quality of a good novel: the capacity to escape, and help the reader escape, time. You want to turn the pages, but you do not want the pages to end. The words are fresh, and the world of the novel is completely alive, despite being written over 40 years ago... A lovely, charming book brimming with life and full of the unexpectedness of a closely observed world. Everything comes to the old hotel, either to the sumptuous guest rooms or to the terrace where the staff live. Love and death are never far away. Sankar writes of both simply and movingly. There will be many grateful readers at his table' --The Gaurdian

Book Description:

Every 15 years there comes along an Indian novel readers don't want to end...

1979: The Far Pavilions by M. M. Kaye
1994: A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
2010: Chowringhee by Sankar

'A terrific page-turner... An utter treat... Chowringhee might, to many eyes, supply more unashamed reader-transporting enjoyment than any other fiction of the year.' Boyd Tonkin, Independent

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 014310103X
• ISBN 13: 9780143101031
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 420