Railsong

Reviews / Votes

Rahul Bhattacharya is an extraordinary writer, and Railsong is a majestic yet profoundly tender novel. Vigorously alive to the currents of national change as well as to the tragedy, daring, humour and love experienced in one woman's days and years, Railsong bids us to observe the worth and intricacy of one person's journey -- Megha Majumdar, New York Times bestselling author of A BURNING Magnificent. Railsong treads so lightly, and yet has such depth to it. I would follow Miss Chitol to the ends of the earth for the continued joy of her company -- Kamila Shamsie, internationally bestselling and Women's Prize for Fiction-winning author of HOME FIRE Few works capture, with such effectiveness, the profound political and social transformations of the last decades of the twentieth century - tracing their impact from the grassroots to the highest levels of society. Negotiating the subtle, intricate bond between the language of lived experience and the language of narration, Rahul Bhattacharya meets that challenge with remarkable assurance, Railsong a testament to the depth and brilliance of his craft. Charu's solitude permeates the novel, even when she is surrounded by people, even when she performs every duty with care. Rarely has writing so comprehensively, and precisely captured this haunting feeling-the silent burden of the missing - that stands as the novel's greatest achievement and its most profound triumph -- Vivek Shanbhag, author of GHACHAR GHOCHAR Does anyone write better prose than Rahul Bhattacharya? Every word in this gorgeous, darting novel is a surprise. Bhattacharya has created an epic out of a single life -- Karan Mahajan, author of THE ASSOCIATION OF SMALL BOMBS Rahul Bhattacharya's Railsong is a novel of rare attentiveness - to the turns of a life, to the slow sediment of time. It creates an extraordinary archive from a single life, thick with everydayness, layered with complexity and profundity. Even when I wasn't reading, I found myself thinking about the world of Railsong, for in Ms. Chitol, Bhattacharya gives us a heroine to hold in one's heart -- Aanchal Malhotra, author of THE BOOK OF EVERLASTING THINGS Sublime ... In revisiting the political and social history of modern India through the shifting fates of the Chitol family, Bhattacharya sets a benchmark for storytelling, distilling his extensive research into a form that turns even bureaucratic trivia into absorbing plot points ... His protagonist, Miss Chitol, will be remembered as one of the most convincingly real female characters written by a male writer ... A page turner until the very end * Mint *