Globalisation has changed, and is changing, our cities beyond recognition. Because of our still colonial education, which downplays our past, most of us are not even aware of what is being lost. This finely wrought book is a kind of personal history of Calcutta, its people and its epiphanies. Amit Chaudhuri is clear that Calcutta, the grand city of Bengal Renaissance, colonial splendour and Marxist yearnings, is quite dead or only lives on in the memory of those from that time who are still amon...

A mere 87 pages in and I'm moving on, perhaps to be given a second chance when I travel to Calcutta. While I have never read Chaudhuri's fiction, based on the awards he's received this book may be proof that it's very difficult to write both fiction and nonfiction well. I generally enjoy observations of cities, narratives that give on a sense of place. That sense can be of daily life, history, architecture, smells, impressions; 87 pages in I have no sense of Calcutta. Perhaps a fault of my own i...

From Aravind Adiga’s raucous, Booker Prize-winning ‘White Tiger’, to the much-feted ‘Narcopolis’ by Jeet Thayil and the vibrant reportage of Katherine Boo’s ‘Behind The Beautiful Forevers’, much of the recent, globally celebrated Indian writing has arrived from the point of view of those at the bottom looking up.While the western appetite for what one might glibly label slum-lit shows no sign of abating, it’s evidently not the whole story from a nation seeking awkwardly to establish itself as an...

My first Amit Chaudhuri novel was 'A New World', a novel I didn't enjoy at all. But the author's reputation persuaded me to give him a second chance, as every reader should give a writer he isn't entirely convinced with the first time.And I wasn't disappointed. Not at all.The book starts slowly, slowly gathers pace, becomes terrific reading in the middle parts, and slows down again at the end. When I say slow down, I mean that the author deftly makes you, the reader pause to think and take it al...

I read Chaudhuri’s last book back in 2017 and fell in love with his writing. Since then all his other books, including this one, had been on my mind but I never got around them. Finally, with the need to read more on my city to further my research, I picked up this non-fiction, his ode of the city in which he hadn’t grown up but had grown to being attached with age. The book comprises nine chapters, each looking into the fabric that makes Calcutta what it is- from history to present (2011, when

In my opinion, we could have enjoyed reading this nine-topic book more if we had been familiar with some key political, social and linguistic contexts in which Calcutta was the focal point of the author's narration with interesting viewpoints and sense of humor. Notably, this hardcover's format presentation is finely designed due to its generous blanks between each subtopic marked by three rhombus-like shapes, thus, it was a bit relieving when I could pause for a while after, say, a lengthy deba...

A bit of a frustrating experience at first as you try to figure out what Chauduri's up to and wait in vain for him to come to the point. And yet as you read on you find yourself getting comfortable with those digressions, bits of dialogue, name dropping and nostalgia about his cousin's puja annuals (he mentions them three times!). As Blue says so well he is a mood-setter and not a plot-mover. Keep that in mind and you'll be fine.Before reading this I'd been to Italy and had been reading a few no...

I am grateful for this book's existence. My future sister-in-law is from Calcutta and I was to learn about the city's culture. This book introduced me to the bhadrolok and the Bengali Renaissance. I read about Durga Puja and I learned that lots of Bengali names come from the word for light. I learned a bit about the geography of the city, and about how people interact with their servants. The prevalence of disease among the poor broke my heart. On the other hand, the author is a terrible snob wh...

I gave it 50 pages, and have given up on it for now.Perhaps it is a case of the wrong book at the wrong time, but it is just too slow for me. The blurb states "author Amit Chaudhuri has been widely 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." which is accurate - the writing is very good, but it may be too subtle and slow for me to get hold of - perhaps in general, but perhaps just for now.

Calcutta: Two Years in a City, Amit ChaudhuriIn 1903, Lord Curzon, the man who proposed to partition Bengal, wrote: "Calcutta is in reality a European city set down upon Asiatic soil, and that it is a monument – in my opinion one of the most striking extant monuments, for it is the second city to London in the entire British Empire – to the energy and achievements of our race." The British empire no longer exists and Curzon's Calcutta has metamorphosed itself into Kolkata-a city that has slowly

I found this recently released book at a shop in Fulham, London. As I read the first chapters, I found myself on a nostalgic trip to Calcultta - a city that was British Empire's capital until 1911 - the metropolis now dilapidated that once shaped India's modern national identity. Without its artists, philosophers, scientists and social-reformers the modern India as we know today would have never existed.This period of Renaissance however was neither complete nor strong enough to survive in moder...

It should have been either funnier or meaner

This book came to me very serendipitously. I had walked into the Oxford book store on Park Street looking for a book on Kolkata,not a detached historical narrative but more of a novel of manners. Kolkata is where I was born and has played a large role in my childhood memories.After some 16 odd years I had reconnected with the city and was ready to take off my rose tinted,foggy with nostalgia glasses and rediscover it as an adult. Amit Chaudhuri moves to Calcutta in 1999 and ' Calcutta - 2 years

I tried. I ordered a used copy of this book, hoping it would provide (as per the jacket) a 'intimate, luminous portrait of Calcutta', a city about which I'd love to learn more. Instead, it offers a kind of peevish memoir, full of uncharitable sketches of people the author has met at various stages of his life. This might be of great interest to someone who has read Chaudhuri's fiction and wants insight into the author himself, but it doesn't fit the bill as an introduction to, or history or soci...

In the course of many an idle day dream, I have wondered how it would be to write about Trivandrum from a different point of view. The term different here needs to be qualified as : One tempered by extended time of living in a different part of the world and coming back to stare with wonderment, consternation and nostalgia at the place of one's early years. The tone of this book is along these lines but the backdrop is not Kerala, it is a place that has attracted and irritated me in equal measur...

This book is full of masterful essays, rich in language and intellect. I now really want to re-visit Calcutta and eat at Flurys and write a similar book about my Mumbai.

I have never read Amit Chaudhuri's novels, but I can see that he is not a plot-mover; he is rather a mood-setter. Even in his essays about Calcutta, or Kalkota, there is a strong sense of moods shifting, memories languidly slipping through time, objects standing still, and people observing; not much happens other than conversations. Chaudhuri is at times an eager journalist, doggedly questioning everyone from Italian chefs (not to be confused with executive chefs!) to the very poor people who li...

Lacks grit. Maybe wrong time to read it.

I've been to India a few times, though never Calcutta. I would say if would help to have spent time in an Indian city to fully appreciate the book.One of the strongest points made by the author has to do with the "old" Calcutta having pretty much disappeared around the time of the Kolkata renaming. As with many world cities, today there is basically a vestigial historical facade, but most of the territory consists of modern innovation. He was at his best when he portrayed examples of various res...

Just after this book was released, I heard Amit Chaudhury talk about his years in Calcutta, first when he used to spend his childhood vacations and then when he stayed there for two years. I got fascinated and bought the book. He beautifully describes his two years (2009-2011) in the city, after living in Bombay and London, in first person. Not only has he mentioned about the famous places of Calcutta like the Park Street, Flurys, New Market, Mocambo, Oxford Book Store, the clubs and Melody, he