From Publishers Weekly
Dutta depicts Calcutta's many faces in this erudite guide to the city, which is part of the Cities of the Imagination Series. The author, who was born and raised in Calcutta and who has translated Bengali literature, divides her book into nine chapters, each one examining a different facet of the varied Indian metropolis. Her section on "Company Calcutta" identifies Calcutta's founder, Job Charnock, and pinpoints August 24, 1690 as the "beginning of Calcutta." She goes on, in that chapter, to discuss cultural mixing (between the colonizers and the colonized) in the 1700s. Another chapter, entitled "City of Strife," addresses Calcutta's longstanding image of poverty and portrays Mother Teresa as having "an uncanny understanding of the psychology of charity." Wide-ranging if dense, Dutta's work presents an in-depth portrait of one of India's most intriguing cities. A list of suggested reading, which ranges from V. S. Naipaul to Jhumpa Lahiri, along with indexes of important Calcutta people and places add to the book's value. B&w illus., maps. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Calcutta: A Cultural and Literary History FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Dutta depicts Calcutta's many faces in this erudite guide to the city, which is part of the Cities of the Imagination Series. The author, who was born and raised in Calcutta and who has translated Bengali literature, divides her book into nine chapters, each one examining a different facet of the varied Indian metropolis. Her section on "Company Calcutta" identifies Calcutta's founder, Job Charnock, and pinpoints August 24, 1690 as the "beginning of Calcutta." She goes on, in that chapter, to discuss cultural mixing (between the colonizers and the colonized) in the 1700s. Another chapter, entitled "City of Strife," addresses Calcutta's longstanding image of poverty and portrays Mother Teresa as having "an uncanny understanding of the psychology of charity." Wide-ranging if dense, Dutta's work presents an in-depth portrait of one of India's most intriguing cities. A list of suggested reading, which ranges from V. S. Naipaul to Jhumpa Lahiri, along with indexes of important Calcutta people and places add to the book's value. B&w illus., maps. (July) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), self-proclaimed intellectual nexus of India and the capital of West Bengal province, is a teeming, noisy, chaotic, and politically charged city with a longstanding Marxist governance. Founded in 1690 by East India Company agent Job Charnok, the city became the hub of the British Raj until the end of colonial rule in 1947. Part of Interlink's "Cities of the Imagination" series, which comprises travel guides to the histories of the greatest cities of the world, this book is a detailed, well-wrought panorama of the city's history. Against a sweeping background of colonialist portraits (Robert Clive, Sir William Jones, Warren Hastings, Lord Curzon) and institutions (Government House, the Asiatic Society, Victoria Memorial Hall), Dutta, who was born and raised in Kolkata and has written several books on Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, overlays a rich narrative of Bengali literary, cultural, and reformist movements and icons. These include Mother Teresa, world-renowned filmmaker Satyajit Ray, Swami Vivekananda (a proponent of Vedanta philosophy), the artistic traditions of Khalighat painting, Kumortoli pottery, and the Durga Puja festival. Dutta's insightful history affords the armchair traveler a comprehensive introduction to the forces that have shaped Calcutta into the current Kolkata. For all libraries. [Forthcoming titles in the series include guides to St. Petersburg and Dublin.-Ed.]-Lonnie Weatherby, McGill Univ., Montreal Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
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