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Freedom Song

Freedom Song

by Amit Chaudhuri, introduction by Wendy Doniger

$16.95
$16.95
Asian Literature Available as E-Book Fiction
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Freedom Song, set in Calcutta in 1993, is about the city and two families who live there. The first consists of a couple, Khuku and her husband Shib; their son has been living for a few years in America. Khuku's old friend Mini is visiting them while she recuperates from arthritis. Khuku and Mini spend their time talking about family, friends, health and, occasionally, Muslims and the Babri Masjid.

Not far away, in Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar Road, lives the second family: Khuku's brother Bhola, his wife, their son Bhaskar and daughter Piyu; a second son, Manik, has gone to live in Germany. Bhaskar, much to the consternation of the family, has recently joined the Indian Communist Party, disappears to sell the party newspaper Ganashakti (People's Power) and has become active in street theater.

Additional Book Information

Series: NYRB Classics
ISBN: 9781681378060
Pages: 200
Publication Date:

Praise

This novel is one of the closest and most luminous illustrations of ‘still life’ I have seen in contemporary fiction. Here is a world so ‘still’ that the reader expects it to collapse at any moment from the explosion or from some internal combustion of violence. And it is this gap between the reader’s expectation and the novelist’s refusal to fulfill it that gives Chaudhuri’s narrative both energy and a rare kind of tranquillity.
—Sumana Roy, Los Angeles Review of Books

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