Waiting for Rain  (English, Paperback, Mukhopadhyay Shirshendu)

Somsundar and Manju wait for life to fall into place, as Kolkata waits for rain Kolkata in the early Seventies. The city is besieged by the Naxalite movement, which holds its genteel middle class in a thrall of terror. Caught in the crossfire between the destructive power of the Naxalite insurgency and the brutal backlash of the police force’s counter-attacks, peace-loving citizens don’t know which way to turn. The first post-Independence generation of Bengalis has barely come of age, only to face crippling poverty, unemployment, disillusionment and despair. As this lost generation hurtles headlong on a sure course to self-destruction, the city is caught in the throes of a torrid, parched, disabling, seemingly endless summer. Nerves are on edge as Kolkata waits for rain and relief …

Waiting for Rain is Sahitya Akademi-winner Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay’s finely etched and evocative novel about Kolkata as it was before it changed forever. It is a Kolkata seen through the eyes of Somsundar, young, unemployed and despondent, a past-his-prime boxer who must wrestle with reality when his elder brother, suspected of being a Naxalite, disappears. It is also the Kolkata of Manju, who must break out of the cocoon of her wealthy family background and her engagement to the handsome and successful Adri when the tumult of the times catches up with her. Like thousands of other Kolkatans, Somsundar and Manju must make sense of their own lives before they can come to terms with the strange times they live in.

Available for the first time in English in a superb translation, this is a book that is sure to grip the reader with its riveting narrative, its sharply observed cast of characters, and its compelling portrayal of a great city in shambles.