A HINDU, MINT, DECCAN HERALD, FRONTLINE, INDIA TODAY BEST BOOK OF 2025

“I will read Rahul Bhattacharya’s shopping list if he doesn’t write anything else, but fortunately, 2025 wasn’t one of those years. In Railsong, his heroine Charu takes a train – not once but many times. A history and a geography of the country seeps out of the crazily readable novel directly into the part of the brain where memorable novels life. Indeed, this is the book we could well remember this year for.”
India Today

“Ever so often there comes an Indian novel that brings about a character who represents a microcosm of the nation… Charulata Chitol… is a woman everyone should have around, be it in reality or fiction. Bhattacharya’s unforgettable character, a woman in a man’s world, inspires awe and challenges readers to put women at the centre while examining the various facets of history.”
The Telegraph 

“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

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