A New World - by Amit Chaudhuri (Paperback)

About the Book

"A year after his divorce, Jayojit Chatterjee, an economics professor in the American Midwest, travels to his native Calcutta with his young son, Bonny, to spend the summer holidays with his parents. Jayojit is no more accustomed to spending time alone with Bonny-who lives with his mother in California-than he is with the Admiral and his wife, whose daily rhythms have become so synchronized as to become completely foreign to their son. Together, the unlikely foursome struggles to pass the protracted hours of summer, each in his or her own way mourning Jayojit's failed marriage. And as Jayojit walks the bustling streets of Calcutta, he finds himself not only caught between clashing memories of India and America, but also between different versions of his life, revisiting lost opportunity, realized potential, and lingering desire. As he did in his acclaimed trilogy Freedom Song, Amit Chaudhuri lovingly captures life's every detail on the page while infusing the quiet interactions of daily existence with depth and compassion"--

Book Synopsis

A newly divorced professor returns home to Calcutta and contends with his disconnection from his son, his parents, and life itself in this atmospheric, lushly descriptive novel of loss and the difficulty of continuing on in spite of it.

A New World is a tale of a man recovering from a difficult divorce and a story about the way we live now. Set in the 1990s, the book describes a world become, in the wake of the Cold War, more international and interconnected in which, at the same time, connection has grown ever more tenuous and harder to sustain. Jayojit, born and bred in India, is a professor of economics at a college in the American Midwest. His ex-wife has moved to California, taking their young son, Bonny, with her. For summer vacation, Jayojit has brought Bonny to Calcutta to visit his mother and father, a retired admiral in the Indian navy. The heat of summer has moved in when the two arrive; the monsoon will come before they leave. During the course of this stay, Jayojit will brood over the past and try to imagine the future, while enduring the inconveniences and misunderstandings and absurdities of family life and occasionally venturing out, alone or with Bonny, to explore the changing landscape of the city. Present throughout Chaudhuri's pages are questions central to life and to the life of the novel: What is freedom and what is responsibility? What, beyond the commotion of the moment, are the commonalities that bind us together?

Review Quotes

"Unbelievably beautiful; I like to dip in and out, a few pages at a time, letting the words nurture me." --Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

"A literary landmark, a superb study of dislocation." --Eileen Battersby, The Irish Times

"Chaudhuri's beautiful third novel offers delicate tableaux vivants.... What most distinguishes A New World is not is narrative contours, but its repose. It is a gentle book of tremendous patience and sensitivity." --Times Literary Supplement

"Among the literary voices from Indian to have made themselves heard over the past ten years, Amit Chaudhuri's is one of the quietest but most impressive.... [A] beautifully balanced, affecting, truthful book." --Sunday Telegraph

"Mr. Chaudhuri holds our attention with unobtrusive evocation of place, texture, and humanity.... He is capable of producing that quicksilver compound of recognition and surprise, which is, of course, what so often distinguishes art." --The Economist

"Chaudhuri...has as much of life in each of his books as many of his contemporaries will capture in a career...At times, reading some of these passages, you can be reminded of reading Joyce's Dubliners for the first time, where every sentence can seem a small act of beauty." --Tim Adams, The Observer

About the Author

Amit Chaudhuri is a novelist, essayist, poet, and musician. He is a professor of creative writing and the director of the Centre for the Creative and the Critical at Ashoka University. His most recent book is Sweet Shop: New and Selected Poems, 1985-2023, published by NYRB Poets.