Freedom Song

Amit Chaudhuris highly acclaimed novel now in a new superbly designed paperback format. Selling Points: Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. His most accomplished novel so far Chaudhuri is one of two or three Indian writers in English who seem aware of the peculiar poignancies of a sheltered middle-class existence in India and is able to describe them in measured prose of an unvaryingly high quality. There is an alertness to the smallest fluctuation of feeling which is reminiscent of the best of Henry Green and in cinema of Satyajit Ray New Statesman.The Book: Khuku a housewife is irritated with the Muslims because their call to prayer wakes her up early every morning; her husband a retired businessman has been hired to cure a sick sweet factory that doesnt particularly want to be cured. Across town Khukus brother worries about his sons affiliations with the Communist Party but only because they may affect his ever-so-gradually coalescing marriage prospects. Freedom Song is vintage Amit Chaudhuri playing with big ideas while evoking the smallest aspects of everyday life with acute tenderness and extraordinary beauty.