How do u describe a book like this? Phenomenally detailed description. You're literally taken to each room and brought face to face with every character.

So they went out for a walk. They went through narrow lightless lanes, where houses that were silent but gave out smells of fish and boiled rice stood on either side of the road. There was not a single tree in sight; no breeze and no sound but the vaguely musical humming of mosquitoes. Once, an ancient taxi wheezed past, taking a short-cut through the lane into the main road, like a comic vintage car passing through a film-set showing the Twenties into the film-set of the present, passing from b...

I'm tempted to give it 4 stars instead of 3 simple because of its first half. He beautifully strings together the everyday nothings in a Bengali household till a point, after which there was something amiss. Hence the 3 stars.

Would have given it four if the short stories were as good as the first novella.

Almost my entire life, I have been magnetically drawn to Indian literature, from Riki-Tikki-Tavi through to Midnight’s Children; so this one leapt from a shelf and into my hands without me having any say in the matter.And it soon became abundantly clear that Chaudhuri has writerly magic at his fingertips; his prose is wonderfully poetic and each incidental detail is lovingly observed. Yet the story itself is languorous and moves without any discernible purpose. On top of that, even I, the Sultan...

Sandeep, an only child living in a Bombay, comes with his mother to his maternal uncle’s house to spend his vacations with his cousins Abhi and Babla. This book has a mention of two such vacations one and a half year apart, one in the summers and one in the winters of the following year. The way the kids spend their time in the summer vacation, looking at the pigeons, watching the passers by, sitting on the balcony, looking at the palm tree in the neighborhood reflects how innocent childhood is....

“why did these houses seem to suggest that an infinitely interesting story might be woven around them? And yet the story would never be a satisfying one, because the writer, like Sandeep, would be too caught up in jotting down the irrelevances and digressions that make up lives, and the life of a city, rather than a good story – till the reader would shout "Come to the point!" – and there would be no point, except the girl memorising the rules of grammar, the old man in the easy-chair fanning hi...

This book is about Kolkata (no I don't mean rosogolla ,mishti doi or Durga pujo) but all those small insignificant things which makes one a bengali, from rooting for Netaji over Gandhi or dada over dhoni.If you want to take a trip down the memory lane to your childhood days you used to spend in your 'mama'r bari' (uncle's house) on the long summer vacation, playing with your cousins endlessly or waiting for 'batasha' at the end of your grandmother's pujo ,go for this book.This will be specially

One of those books where nothing happens and that's ok. Lovely prose describing two holidays on the life of 10-year-old Sandeep, who travels from the modern apartment of his parents in Bombay in the school holidays to the more chaotic world of his extended family in Calcutta. A story of rickshawallas and all the kids in one bed, of learning to speak some Bengali and coping with the diabolical heat. It gives a feel of India in 250 pages.

I had never read anything by Amit Chaudhuri before, I bought this book expecting a story set in the lovely atmosphere of my Calcutta. However, upon reading it I came to realise Chaudhuri doesn’t write in the conventional mode of story-telling, his novel is a narration of Calcutta and the life it holds within its stable environs. The book is a beautiful narration of Calcutta in its pristine condition. Chaudhuri has shown what Calcutta meant to a little boy and his family who have moved out to Bom...

This is a subtle, beautifully written novel, full to the brim (though at times overflowing) with metaphors, analogies and similes. A family visit to an oddly peaceful, calm, safe and serene Calcutta in the heat of summer is described in loving detail. Chaudhuri’s Calcutta is not the dirty, noisy, crowded madhouse described by most contemporary Indian authors but a place where even the traffic jams are “punctual, ceremonial and glorious”. In the same spirit, life in the modest Calcutta home and t...

Reading Amit Chaudhuri's 'A Strange and Sublime Address' is like sipping vintage wine on a transcontinental flight. You're in the same seat seemingly not having gone anywhere but mysteriously transported without your own knowledge to another place, another time. All this with the smoothness of velvety turns of phrase and clever manipulations of language. If you're looking for a story or a purpose then there is none. But then is there any purpose in sipping a glass of vintage wine on a long fligh...

Chaudhari the mood magician. He cant tell a good story if you put a gun to his head but that's okay because that's not his job. His job is to shape with deft fingers beautiful images of everyday life where nothing happens...where the whole day is composed of a series of dot dot dots ... ... .. where languid days of summer stretch into the horizon punctuated only by pigeon flutterings and afternoon siestas. What is the book about then? Nothing, really - simply the patchwork display of everyday so...

I had almost abandoned 'A strange and Sublime Address' but then decided not to. Soon I realized that the slow paced narrative is actually what the story being told demands to create the idle atmosphere of Calcutta's summer. Everyone who has spent their share of summer holidays at their maternal uncle's place will understand where the book is coming from. Almost nothing happens as pages flow and yet a sense of nostalgia is instilled. Amit Chaudhuri brings the little joys and disappointments in a

bapok, as they say in bengali. a charming little book.

Too many tacky metaphors and similes. I tried to work past it but then THIS happened on page 12–13: "a grating, earthy noise, like a drunk man cracking an obscene joke in a guttural dialect and laughing at it at the same time," and "each year is like a precious deposit in a newly opened bank account." NEWLY OPENED BANK ACCOUNT. I closed the book immediately and gave up. I'll give some of his later works a try...

Reading this book, one can't help but notice the exquisite way the author strings his words into sentences to create absolute magic. I loved the story that the book begins with and takes more than half the pages. That of Sandeep.The other short stories that follow are sometimes strange, sometimes sublime, each leaving you wondering about the darkness beneath what meets the eye.

The book is as it's title refers, "strange". There is not much of a plot going on the plot front as it deals with the subtle unfolding of events during two school vacations.Kolkata is portrayed here , not in it's majestic glory of "The great imperial city", but through it's by lanes of filth , despair and very middle class ambition.The book is like a old story that was been recounted in drawing rooms adaas, at parties , at reunions . It has the perfect mix of truth and colourwhich blend to becom...

The author takes us inside a typical (I presume) Bengali house in Calcutta with all its day-to-day travails through the eyes of 10-year-old Sandeep who's visiting his maternal uncle. Life goes on at a slow pace as Sandeep and his cousins watch the daily happenings - his uncle getting ready for office, his mother & aunt chit-chatting, shopping in Calcutta, a simple lunch of rice & fish and the pleasures of an afternoon nap.Chaudhuri paints a lovely picture of both the city and its occupants throu...