Writer and musician Amit Chaudhuri’s elegant debut novel, in which an Indian ten-year-old experiences the entirely distinct experiences of life in Bombay, where his family lives, and Calcutta, where he visits relatives during his summer vacation.
A ten-year-old boy, Sandeep, visits, with his mother, his maternal uncle’s house in Calcutta for his summer vacation; and a year and a half later visits it again. Here, in Calcutta, he plunges into a life quite different from the Bombay in which he is growing up; and his imagination transforms, and is transformed by, the family, a city, the spaces of a house, the Bengali language, mortality, and the enduring allure of the everyday.