Sweet Shop: New and Selected Poems, 1985-2023 - by Amit Chaudhuri (Paperback)

About the Book

"Meditations on city life in Mumbai, Calcutta, and the United Kingdom as well as elegies for the dead populate this original collection. Amit Chaudhuri, one of the most exploratory writers of English-language fiction, has also written and published poetry throughout his career as a novelist, poetry that shares many of the concerns of his prose while sounding a distinct and memorable note of its own. This book collects the greater portion of that work for the first time, starting with St Cyril Road, named after a street in Bandra, a suburb of Bombay to which Chaudhuri's parents moved in the early eighties. On visits to them from the UK, where he was studying, Chaudhuri found his attention drawn to the minutiae of streets and balcony-level sightings with a sense of everyday discovery that he then brought to his poems. In subsequent years he largely abandoned poetry, until a visit in 2018 to North Calcutta to photograph the interiors of sweet shops led to a new volume, Sweet Shop. If St Cyril Road is about being and looking, Sweet Shop is about the taste of living. It was followed by the poems in Ramanujan (named after the great mathematician), which trace the way Chaudhuri's life has been intertwined with various cities, as well as poems that serve as elegies for his parents. This collection also has the essay "Interlude," about Chaudhuri's parents' move to Bandra and his beginnings as a poet, a selection of songs, and some unpublished new poems"--

Book Synopsis

Amit Chaudhuri, one of the most exploratory writers of English-language fiction, has also written and published poetry that shares many of the concerns of his prose while sounding a distinct and memorable note of its own. This book collects the greater portion of that work for the first time, starting with St Cyril Road (2005), Sweet Shop (2019), Ramanujan (2021), and a selection of new and uncollected poems, as well as translations from Bengali.

Review Quotes

"Chaudhuri is a phenomenon. Among the best novelists writing in English, he is also a singer, an essayist, and a critic. Now comes this selection of poems spanning decades. In his author's note, he acknowledges a decade-long hiatus from writing poetry, and it's clear that his style evolved during that time. Whereas the earlier poems are about places in which the poet found the source of his feelings, the later ones record appetites with wonder and skepticism." --Michael Autrey, Booklist

"Throughout the collection, sweets and food are Chaudhuri's handles to reflect in all manners of contexts and layers, invoking political, cultural, and religious aspects...While this collection offers a journey enlaced with colorful and sensual aesthetics, it is also peopled with mother, father, Ramanujan (the mathematician), Keith Jarrett, Adil Jussawalla and Nissim Ezekiel (the poets), and a few others. His embrace of life includes the canvas of Cambridge, Oxford, and other places, including a tunnel and a cathedral. The scope undertaken by this collection is vast but turns into something universal." --Yogesh Patel, World Literature Today

"Amit Chaudhuri's Sweet Shop, ranging from earliest work to poems just out of the oven, tickles the taste buds with the names of Bengali treats: sandesh, cham cham, petha....Through food, Chaudhuri charts geography, colonial and imperial history, and his own growing up--the sweet shops of Calcutta and the travails of Hindu scholars in England seeking nourishment they can bear (haunted by the ghost of the mathematician Ramanujan, who almost died of starvation in Cambridge). These sensuous poems chant the undersong to Chaudhuri's many novels. There's a Laurentian fullness to this record of a life in song and story." --Rosanna Warren

"Chaudhuri brings a preternatural deftness and imaginative intelligence to his works. His poems are wistful, witty, and winsome." --Charles Bernstein

About the Author

Amit Chaudhuri is the author of seven novels, including Friend of My Youth (available from NYRB). Among his other published works are collections of short stories, poetry, and essays. His most recent book is the acclaimed work of memoir and criticism, Finding the Raga (also available from NYRB). Chaudhuri is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and holds the titles of Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia in England and Professor of Creative Writing at Ashoka University in India. In addition, he is a singer in the North Indian classical tradition.