The Engine of History: Writing Calcutta and Bangladesh into the Novel

Join us for an evening of storytelling as two authors, Ruchir Joshi & Manzu Islam, take the stage to present their masterful novels - Godzilla and the Songbird and The Great Eastern Hotel.

Godzilla and the Song Bird

Set in the period before and through the Bangladeshi war of independence, this novel has at its heart the continuing friendship between three boys with a love of cinema, whose loyalty into adulthood has surprising outcomes. Bulbul, the central character, is a journalist who witnesses and experiences the clash between individual struggles for meaning in a world torn apart by war, genocide and religious exclusions.

The Great Eastern Hotel

Set in Calcutta’s grandest hotel during the tumultuous days of World War II, The Great Eastern Hotel captures a city—and a world—on the brink of seismic change. On the day of Rabindranath Tagore’s death, the lives of an eclectic cast intersect: a Communist student, a disillusioned Englishwoman, an aspiring artist, and a pickpocket thrust into the shadows of espionage. Within the hotel’s opulent walls, an American jazz musician, a French chef, a Jewish heiress, and military conspirators play out their dramas against the backdrop of war and impending revolution. Ruchir Joshi’s ambitious novel is both a gripping historical mosaic and a meditation on nationalism, love, and art—revealing how the past echoes into our present.

About the speakers

Ruchir Joshi is the author of the novel, The Last Jet-Engine Laugh, and of Poriborton! – An Election Diary, a road book about the 2011 state elections in West Bengal. He is also the editor of Electric Feather, a collection of Indian erotic fiction. Over the years, Joshi has contributed to Granta, India Magazine, Man’s World, Seminar, E-Flux, Witte de Witt Review, The Indian Quarterlyand other journals. He has also been a columnist for The Telegraph, The Hindu, Economic Times and other major Indian newspapers. As a film-maker, he has directed documentaries and essay films, including the award-winning Eleven Miles, Memories of Milk City and Tales from Planet Kolkata. Joshi lives in Calcutta.

Manzu Islam was born in 1953 in East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) where he lived through the 1971 war, walking the swamps for weeks to reach the refugee camps in India, then returning to fight as a freedom fighter. He came to England as a political refugee and, after studying for a degree and working as a racial harassment officer in East London, he became interested in writing.

Image credit: Wikimedia commons Chowringhee Kolkata 1945