The novel Great Eastern Hotel explores Kolkata's historical significance as a center for intellectual thought and political struggle in the 19th century. The narrative begins in 1941, focusing on the Great Eastern Hotel, a microcosm of the city's complexities. It tells the story of Nirupama, a young communist revolutionary navigating romance and political turmoil, and her son Saki, who seeks his artistic identity post-independence. Themes of memory, history, and the clash between personal and collective experiences are integral to the narrative's development.
The observation by architect Louis Kahn that you can only really see a building once the building becomes a ruin runs through this book like the Hooghly river through India's former capital.
Great Eastern Hotel, the second novel from the author of The Last Jet-Engine Laugh, is 920 pages and well over 300,000 words long.
The book revolves around young communist revolutionary Nirupama, whose ill-fated romance with an African American soldier leaves her with a semi-orphan son.
The narrative combines the story of her political and emotional development filtered through that of her son in the years after Indian independence.
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