Rajat Chaudhuri's Blog

Long rambling interview with The Times of India. Here we discuss writing, fellowship opportunities for writers and why I chose to write books. Read it here: http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes....

The Asian Review of Books (Hong Kong) has this to say: 'Hotel Calcutta invites a hungry, urgent reading ... a seductive swilling of mystery, travellers’ tales, fantasy, noir, idiosyncrasy, ghosts, painters, theosophists, porn, intoxication, science and hearsay. Eleven tales in all, each about obsession or a passionate undoing' Read the full review of Hotel Calcutta here: http://www.asianreviewofbooks.com/new...

The Sunday Guardian has reviewed Hotel Calcutta under its Essential Readings section on 30th June, 2013. The short review is headlined: A dazzling ‘wall of stories’ in Calcutta. Read the full review on The Sunday Guardian's website here: http://www.sunday-guardian.com/bookbe...

The Indian Literature journal (Jan-Feb 2013) has published a review of Hotel Calcutta written by noted academic Anuradha Ghosh. Indian Literature journal is published by Sahitya Akademi -- National Academy of Letters.
An excerpt: `An astounding work that interrogates the myriad surfaces of reality ... Absurdity becomes, in his hands, a pleasant tool, one that helps to displace and repattern the elements that make up our systems of thought and emotion. Roger Mortimer, the white tomcat that apparently steps out of a painted canvas into a different life, a different system of love and aging, would dominate the imagination of the reader for a very long time, invoking issues of love and mutability that are as old as literature itself.'
Read the full review here at the author's website: http://bit.ly/18DeozO (Scanned pages)

Hotel Calcutta was recently reviewed by novelist Anu Kumar for The Thumb Print magazine. She writes `Rajat Chaudhuri is at his best bringing alive the beguiling and menacing allure of such places, and the characters that could belong only here. The lady in the museum; the 'khansamah' lost in his memories of almost a century ago of Annie Besant and the count who never dies; the old-fashioned librarian with his uncanny abilities, the two guests and their hostess in Lianville who find themselves inexplicable adversaries of each other.' Read the full review here: http://thethumbprintmag.com/content.p...

' Lethal games and unspeakable terrors lie between these covers, the spine oozing spilt bodily fluids. Chaudhuri clearly inhabits several worlds. His interest in surrealism goes beyond the perfunctory; he takes the preternatural seriously. Read on, though, and his themes reveal a deep fascination with human response to the extraordinary, with the gossamer threads between the rational and inexplicable ...' Hotel Calcutta gets a nice stylised review in Helter Skelter magazine. Read on: http://helterskelter.in/2013/04/book-...

The Telegraph, Calcutta has done a short and nice review of Hotel Calcutta in its Paperback Pickings section. Read it here: http://telegraphindia.com/1130329/jsp...

Interview in Unboxed Writers with novelist Anu Kumar. Here we talk about the inspiration behind my new book `Hotel Calcutta', other hotel books, re-imagining the city and authors writing about the urban experience. Read it here: http://unboxedwriters.com/2013/03/a-s...