Great Eastern Hotel
‘Riotously audacious and entertaining – cinematic, jazzlike, a humdinger of a novel’ KAMILA SHAMSIE
August 1941. The world is at war. At the Great Eastern, Calcutta’s most luxurious hotel, amidst the feasting, dancing and laughter, we witness the metropolis in the last moments before disaster strikes.
On the day the revered poet Rabindranath Tagore dies, the city comes to a standstill. Thousands of people line the streets to pay their respects. Amongst them are: Nirupama, a history student and Communist Party volunteer; Imogen, the English daughter of a Raj official; Kedar, an aspiring painter; and Gopal, a young pickpocket who finds himself promoted into a dark, dangerous world.
The lives of these four people intertwine with those at the hotel: an American soldier who plays jazz at the nightclub; a genius French chef; an heiress fleeing from the nightmare in Europe; and a group of military officers running a secret intelligence operation.
Magisterial in scope, rich in detail and gloriously entertaining, Great Eastern Hotel brings to life India on the brink of independence. An epic tale of belonging, love, art and how individual lives can become swept up in the tides of history.
‘Sprawling … exuberant …compelling … allow yourself to be immersed in this Great Calcutta Novel that captures both the sweep of history and the pulse of individual lives’ Scroll.in
‘Every phrase and image has been honed to perfection … Read it for a masterclass in the joy of writing from the heart’ Deccan Herald
‘If, like me, you have been waiting for a quarter of a century for what Ruchir would write after his dazzling The Last Jet-Engine Laugh, I have some Persian for you: Der aayad, durast aayad. Finally, an Indian epic for our times‘ Mohammed Hanif, author of A Case of Exploding Mangoes
‘A film-maker’s novel, so vividly immersive … at once human and epic, a Joycean polyphony of overlapping lives’ Jeet Thayil, author of Narcopolis
'Riotously audacious and entertaining - cinematic, jazzlike, a humdinger of a novel' Kamila Shamsie -
”'Sprawling … exuberant …compelling … allow yourself to be immersed in this Great Calcutta Novel that captures both the sweep of history and the pulse of individual lives” - Scroll.in
”'Has there been a novel of such scale since A Suitable Boy? … Beneath its grand sweep, Great Eastern Hotel remains a novel about politics - how the shifting tides of war and colonial uncertainty ripple through the lives of its characters … this novel serves as a meditation on what was, what is and perhaps what will be. As readers lose themselves in its pages, they may find themselves reflecting, much like the characters, on the tides of history and the fleeting nature of place and time” - Outlook India
”'Sprawling and ambitious … There is a forceful and robust beauty to Joshi’s prose, an exuberance that makes dialogue come alive … Joshi’s city teems with stories and he peoples it with a riotous assortment of personalities” - Open Magazine
”'Every phrase and image has been honed to perfection … Read it for a masterclass in the joy of writing from the heart” - Deccan Herald
”'Joshi has managed the impossible with this book - he has captured every nuance and quirk of Calcutta and its people, everything that makes the city both unique and ubiquitously Indian … an extraordinary achievement … I am so happy I read this book” - The Asian Age
”'A film-maker’s novel, so vividly immersive it makes mid-forties Calcutta a living being, at once human and epic, a Joycean polyphony of overlapping lives and a granular history of the nation during wartime” - Jeet Thayil, author of Narcopolis
”'Glorious, brimming with life, Great Eastern Hotel contains multitudes. Ruchir Joshi captures crumbling empires and wayward human lives in this headlong, sensory dive into 1940s Calcutta. A towering novel - one for our times, and for all time” - Nilanjana S. Roy, author of Our Freedoms