The century-old Hotel Calcutta run by an Englishman, is under threat from land sharks who want to raze the building and build a shopping mall. As the staff stare at uncertain times, a monk turns up at the Calcutta hotel and prophesies that the hotel will still stand if a wall of stories can be built. Peter Dutta – the manager – though a little unsure, is ready to give it a shot and begins looking for a storyteller. A painter, who has just stepped into the bar, volunteers to tell the first story. Next it is Peter’s turn. From day to day, as the storytelling fever catches on, new guests arrive, among them a shifty-eyed producer of porn flicks, an American woman who hears the footsteps of a dead soldier in the corridor and finally an odd pair who pretend to be war historians but may be detectives. Soon it seems they have all arrived there with a purpose. Will their stories protect the hotel or will Hotel Calcutta crumble under the sledgehammers of the land sharks? Between techno-angst, deathless love, surreal adventure and an epidemic of thievery, this is a novel that taps into the power of stories to light up our age of trenchant uncertainties and powerful illusions. Read more >
Listed in `The Definitive Climate Fiction Reading List’'Grist (US)
`Joyously ambitious solarpunk ... excels when entwining relational nuance with keenly handled futurist ideas ... number of gems for fans of climate fiction'Publishers Weekly
`Excellent translation ... Hard to find flavour of a culture in ferment'Scroll
`What comes across in the translations, from the very beginning, are the poems' distinctive Bengali origin'Daily Star (Bangladesh)
`Social-existential cares are interwoven with allusions to local or national issues ... will subtly shift our perception as to the currents of Bengali underground poetry'New Indian Express
An exceptional piece by Debal Deb, one of the heroes of the struggle to preserve biodiversity in the face of opposition from industrial agricultural and its client institutions. https://t.co/vVqNwPgItp
Teaching short stories this semester, I already have some great flash and I'll be using @rajatchaudhuri's Multispecies Cities anthology but any other recommendations of stories under 2k words by writers of colour, those with regional voices or working class subjects? Pls RT
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