Best Modern Calcutta Portrait

Travel Writing

The Epic City : The World on the Streets of Calcutta

by Kushanava Choudhury

Shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize and the Stanford Dolman Travel Writing Prize 'Witty, polished, honest and insightful, The Epic City is likely to become for Calcutta what Suketu Mehta's classic Maximum City is for Mumbai' – William Dalrymple, Observer When Kushanava Choudhury arrived in New Jersey at the age of twelve, he had already migrated halfway around the world four times. After graduating from Princeton, he moved back to Calcutta, the city which his immigrant parents had abandoned. Taking a job at a newspaper, he found the streets of his childhood unchanged. Shouting hawkers still overran the footpaths, fish sellers squatted on bazaar floors; and politics still meant barricades and bus burnings. The Epic City is a soulful, compelling and often hilarious account of this metropolis of fifteen million people that is truly a world unto itself. 'A beautifully observed and even more beautifully written new study of Calcutta' – Guardian

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