Chowringhee

Translated by Arunava Sinha.

Welcome to the Shahjahan, one of Calcutta's oldest and most venerable hotels. Its opulent suites, elegant restaurants, huddled bars and hidden backrooms teem with people, whose extraordinary stories are told by Shanker, the newest member of staff.

Shanker describes the unfulfilled desires, broken dreams, and unbidden tragedies of the people who spend their days and nights within the Shahjahan's grand façade. Like Bengal itself, this is a place where greed, seduction and death live alongside love, luxury and pride.

With wit, warmth, and ferocious energy, Chowringhee reveals to us an entire universe. One of the great novels of contemporary Indian Literature, it presents a glittering vision of a lost metropolis, and an homage to an old Bengal of myth and memory.