Great Eastern Hotel

‘Riotously audacious and entertaining – sometimes cinematic, sometimes jazzlike, always a humdinger of a novel’ Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire ‘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 ‘The more I pore over the pages of this novel, the more fascinated I get by the narrative style and Ruchir Joshi's fantastic creative ability to evoke the environs and ambience of the Calcutta of the 1940s, the roads and hotels swarming with British and American soldiers’ Sumanta Banerjee, historian of Calcutta city Praise for The Last Jet-Engine Laugh: 'Written in the joyous tradition of Tristram Shandy, Joshi has Sterne's gift for digressions [and] the master's eye for his surroundings. This is surely a great moment for Indian literature. The Last Jet-Engine Laugh debates whether the story of a nation can be the story of a self.' Tom Payne, Daily Telegraph 'Exhilarating… Joshi's narrative jump-cuts with a surreal invention reminiscent of the work of Vonnegut’ The Times 'Proof positive that it's possible for Indian writers to be wickedly cynical, funny and bitter without the scathing edge blunting the Indianness or vice versa… Put simply, The Last Jet-Engine Laugh is a family saga across three generations. It's also (as most really good books are) a love story. But before you yawn and reach for the remote saying, ""Yaar, saala, it's been done before,"" it ain't quite been done like this. Joshi is a most unsuitable boy, and if there were a glass palace about, he'd be the one throwing stones.' Anita Roy, Biblio