'A film-maker's novel, so vividly immersive it makes mid-forties Calcutta a living being, at once human and epic, a Joycean polyphony of overlapping lives and a granular history of the nation during wartime.' - JEET THAYIL

'Riotously audacious and entertaining - a cinematic, jazzlike humdinger of a novel.' - KAMILA SHAMSIE

'If, like me, you have been waiting for a quarter of a century for what Ruchir will write after his dazzling Last Jet-Engine Laugh, I have some Persian for you: dair ayad, darust ayad. Finally, an Indian epic for and of our times.' - MOHAMMED HANIF

'Glorious, brimming with life, Great Eastern Hotel contains multitudes. Ruchir Joshi captures crumbling empires and wayward human lives in this headlong, sensory dive into 1940s Calcutta. A towering novel - one for our times, and for all time.' - NILANJANA S. ROY

'The more I pore over the pages of this novel, the more fascinated I am by the narrative style and Ruchir Joshi's fantastic creative ability to evoke the environs and ambience of the Calcutta of the 1940s, the roads and hotels swarming with British and American soldiers.' - SUMANTA BANERJEE

Ruchir Joshi isthe author of The Last Jet-Engine Laugh, a novel, and Poriborton!,a book about the 2011 state elections in West Bengal. He has been a columnistfor The Telegraph, The Hindu, The EconomicTimes and other newspapers, and has contributed to Granta, IndiaMagazine, Man's World, Seminar, E-Flux, Wittede Witt Review, The Indian Quarterly, etc. He has also directeddocumentaries and essay films, including the award-winning T