A HINDU, MINT, DECCAN HERALD, FRONTLINE BEST BOOK OF 2025
“Gorgeously crafted, compulsively readable, attention-demanding … The reader immediately knows they’ll never forget Charu … Bhattacharya is at his composed, elegant best as he belts out his gentle ode to the India that was and the India that can be – a nation that despite so many failures and tragedies, electrifies a billion and more dreams with kindness and unexpected sources of kinship.”
Scroll
“In revisiting the political and social history of modern India through the shifting fates of the Chitol family, Bhattacharya sets a benchmark for storytelling … A fictional saga like Railsong demands not only imaginative daring but also dogged discipline. Bhattacharya delivers on both counts abundantly. It has been well worth the wait for him to arrive at this sublime, clear-eyed vision of India—a nation that continues to be held together, as well as torn apart, by acts of unexpected kindness and cruelty.”
Mint
“Masterfully constructed: an exploration of the price of freedom; the vastness of possibility; and the vigilance it can take to wrest control”
Hindustan Times
“In chiselled prose, sentences gleaming like the steel of railway tracks burnished by rolling wheels … Railsong’scyclical narrative structure captur[es] the essence of a heaving, paradoxical, pulsating nation, where tragedy, triumph, spirituality, dynamism, and tumult constantly converge, like railway junctions”
The Hindu
“Railsong is finally a novel of connection — of a woman to her work, of a city to its lines, of a nation to its institutions. In Charu’s patient circuits, Bhattacharya finds the emotional truth he trusts most, and a country still learning to travel together”
Mumbai Mirror
“The ebbs and flows of national life found their reflection in the life of Charulata. Through her life, the book reaches out to tell the story of the times … A rich and expansive canvas, both in space and time”
The Tribune
“Award-winning Bhattacharya sets Charu’s adventures against the backdrop of momentous change in India, from socialism in the 1970s to technological advances to the economic reforms of the 1990s and the rising tide of nationalism. Tracing Charu’s story against tidal forces of history is brilliant”
Booklist
“An illuminating tale about a woman fighting for her agency in India … Through Charu’s experiences, Bhattacharya provides a wide-angle view of India’s inequality and patriarchal gender roles, all while depicting in intimate detail how his protagonist struggles to live on her own terms.”
Publishers Weekly
“A sweeping saga that combines personal narrative and social history while taking a fascinating deep dive into how the Indian Railways works. The beating heart of the story, however, is its indomitable main character, Charulata Chitol … It is a triumph of Bhattacharya’s writing that Charu’s perspective becomes ours … In this character-driven story, it is not only Charu but others, too, who are sharply delineated. The cast of characters is huge, but even the ones who are minor are deftly drawn.”
Deccan Herald
“Fascinated by rules though she may be, [Charulata] is never one to be railroaded into following the inevitable path. On one level, this is a story, told in often lyrical prose, of her defiance of norms … On another, it’s about India in the second half of the 20th century, from Nehruvian optimism and its fading to liberalisation, from the great 1974 railway strike to the Emergency and Indira Gandhi’s assassination to the destruction of the Babri Masjid … Full of observations about the country and its diverse people, through the twin melting pots of the Indian Railways and the metropolis of Bombay… juxtaposed with her personal development, of ever-broader understanding and attendant empathy.”
Indian Express
“An opus with two protagonists—Charulata Chitol and the Indian Railways. In intertwining the two, Bhattacharya weaves the story of a life and a nation in the thrall of change. And yet, the book is never ambiguous about its heart. This is the journey of Charulata. The tracks on which she moves and which move her are the canvas for the portrait, an ambitious and overarching canvas but never overpowering.”
Open
“The past in Railsong is not overlaid with nostalgia; it is a clue to the future. At a steady pace, chronologically and episodically, inluminous, flowing, evocative prose … with a light touch, with a sense of humour and a sense of the absurd that resonates with the best literature … Railsong is a tender, moving novel, with a vision of India.” Frontline