Ruchir Joshi’s Great Eastern Hotel (HarperCollins) is a good attempt at writing the Great Calcutta Novel in English. The story bookends primarily two time periods, the ’40s, but with the ...

Ruchir Joshi ’s Great Eastern Hotel isn’t so much a book as it is a maximalist epic that grabs you by the collar, drags you through the smoke and sweat of 1940s Calcutta, and dumps you out 900 ...

Though the city’s storied Great Eastern Hotel plays a significant part in the proceedings, it is not the prime location of events, as with the hotel in Sankar’s Chowringhee.