A meditative and fragmentary novel about a writer invited to a residency in Paris, where he sublets an apartment in the Château Rouge area—an experience that eventually leads him to a newly expansive attitude toward the city.
I was beginning to feel it would be best not to settle down in areas recognisably Parisian, because places recognisably themselves tend to be fictitious.
A writer is invited to Paris and finds himself living in an area that bears little resemblance to his idea of the city. With the passing of time, his disquiet translates into a way of seeking and experiencing a truer, more unlikely Paris.
Château Rouge takes up residence in that area before floating freely through the city. It takes its time, exploring tangents, diversions, side streets, creeping into new spaces and remote angles, to open up fresh ground and appraise the city, the experience of travel, otherness—and the novel itself—anew.
"Chateau Rouge is a true romance. Chaudhuri's Paris beguiles precisely by refusing to seek approval, to charm, to conform to expectations. And the same is true of this graceful novel, so stubbornly, surprisingly, gorgeously itself. On these uncharted streets and pages, a peculiar magic starts to happen. I don’t quite know how he’s done it—but I love it." —Clare Carlisle
"[Chaudhuri's] very measured, almost poetic prose, which evokes more than it narrates, and the austere economy of his novels, which are one fourth the size of an average Indian novel, make him distinctive: here is a painter not of large and garish Indian murals, but of portraits in miniature of everyday life." —Pankaj Mishra, The New York Review of Books
"Chaudhuri has only one of the novelist’s qualifications, but he has it in abundance . . . he is in love with life, and with people, and he can communicate this love directly and unsentimentally. Nothing is too small or too boring for him: he defamiliarises the everyday, reinvigorates the ordinary, and makes the humdrum seem exciting." —Jonathan Coe, London Review of Books
Amit Chaudhuri is Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia. He has written several works of fiction, a critical study of the poetry of D.H. Lawrence, and edited The Vintage Book of Modern Indian Literature. Among the many awards he has received are the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, and the Government of India’s Sahitya Akademi Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and is also a musician.
View titles by Amit Chaudhuri
A meditative and fragmentary novel about a writer invited to a residency in Paris, where he sublets an apartment in the Château Rouge area—an experience that eventually leads him to a newly expansive attitude toward the city.
I was beginning to feel it would be best not to settle down in areas recognisably Parisian, because places recognisably themselves tend to be fictitious.
A writer is invited to Paris and finds himself living in an area that bears little resemblance to his idea of the city. With the passing of time, his disquiet translates into a way of seeking and experiencing a truer, more unlikely Paris.
Château Rouge takes up residence in that area before floating freely through the city. It takes its time, exploring tangents, diversions, side streets, creeping into new spaces and remote angles, to open up fresh ground and appraise the city, the experience of travel, otherness—and the novel itself—anew.
Praise
"Chateau Rouge is a true romance. Chaudhuri's Paris beguiles precisely by refusing to seek approval, to charm, to conform to expectations. And the same is true of this graceful novel, so stubbornly, surprisingly, gorgeously itself. On these uncharted streets and pages, a peculiar magic starts to happen. I don’t quite know how he’s done it—but I love it." —Clare Carlisle
"[Chaudhuri's] very measured, almost poetic prose, which evokes more than it narrates, and the austere economy of his novels, which are one fourth the size of an average Indian novel, make him distinctive: here is a painter not of large and garish Indian murals, but of portraits in miniature of everyday life." —Pankaj Mishra, The New York Review of Books
"Chaudhuri has only one of the novelist’s qualifications, but he has it in abundance . . . he is in love with life, and with people, and he can communicate this love directly and unsentimentally. Nothing is too small or too boring for him: he defamiliarises the everyday, reinvigorates the ordinary, and makes the humdrum seem exciting." —Jonathan Coe, London Review of Books
Author
Amit Chaudhuri is Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia. He has written several works of fiction, a critical study of the poetry of D.H. Lawrence, and edited The Vintage Book of Modern Indian Literature. Among the many awards he has received are the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, and the Government of India’s Sahitya Akademi Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and is also a musician.
View titles by Amit Chaudhuri
