The Epic City: The World on the Streets of Calcutta

By Kushanava Choudhury

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ONDAATJE PRIZE
SHORTLISTED FOR 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

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Aug 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781408888902

Reviews for The Epic City

[pdcread · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

By the young age of twelve Kushanava Choudhury had moved back and forwards across the planet four times. A graduate of the prestigious Princeton University and with opportunities galore in his adopted country, the call of his home country and city that his parents had left was too great. So he returned home to the city built between a river and a swamp; Calcutta.

It was a city whose golden age had long passed, once the capital when the British ruled, that had moved to Delhi. Relatives called and tried to persuade him that this was not such a good idea as other cities in India could claim to be up and coming and offer chances and business in the new global economy. He took a position at the Statesman, the leading English newspaper in the city and relished the chance of living once again in his home city of fifteen million people.

In this city of a swirling mass of humanity, and a place that assaults every sense that you have. It is a personal journey too, partly down his own memories of the city and the family that had been moved over from East Bengal after partition and Choudhury wants to rediscover the places that made him who he is now. In this thriving city, he is seeking those stories that rarely make the papers and certainly not the headlines to add greater breadth to the everyday lives of this city. It is an enjoyable book to read with a fascinating insight into a city that is still thriving coupled together with his personal story as Choudhury rediscovers all that he loves about the chaos of his home city. A minor detail on this too is that the gold blocking on the cover makes this a sumptuous cover to look at.

[toddtyrtle · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was a tricky read for me. Sometimes it was so negative I couldn't stand it. Other times he made Kolkata sound amazing and fascinating. As someone who has never been there and knows far too little history and culture of the area, I can't begin to comment in a decent review - so think of this less about the book and more about me. There were times I thought I would give up on it and other times I really enjoyed it.

It made me also question "what is travel writing for?" Should it always be positive? Should it always be from the perspective of one in the know? Should it be all-knowing and say "This is what Kolkata is" or acknowledge they're seeing a tiny fraction of what is there - but that fraction could be one of many contradictory realities of the place. I don't think any of us could hope to present a perfect picture of any place no matter how much we know so then how do we present our own perspective?

What I did take away from this, though, is how little history I do know. A tiny fraction of partition, NOTHING about the famine of 1943, nothing of the Naxalites there in the 70's. So I guess I'm glad I read it even I didn't always enjoy it. It opened my eyes to a whole bunch of things I didn't know about before and that will likely result in my going down a whole bunch of other interesting rabbit holes.

[vpfluke · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a memoir of life in two countries, India of his birth and the U.S. where is family raised him. Being hired by the Statesman he had had a job where Choudury had a major step in India, but his job was at an English language periodical. The city is Kolkata, but is usually referred in the book as Calcutta its traditional name since it was founded by the English settlement maybe 300 years ago. I decided to read it as I remember a number of Bengalis in Detroit and they seem a distinctive group. And I was attracted to the fact that Calcutta has retained a number of tram lines, in contradistinction to the rest of South Asia. Many of theses cars are old and bespeak a deterioration of the economic climate in Calcutta. But there is great life in Calcutta. And I had a somewhat distant cousin who worked in Calcutta just before WW2 and had fond memories of the people whom he met and worked with.