Out November 2025 in India and February 2026 in the UK and the US.

In a young country charged with national vigour, Charu, the motherless daughter of a railway worker, pines for a life freed of the oppressive domesticity and meagre prospects in her railway township. As India moves from steam to diesel locomotives, through drought and famine, a great strike and state repression, she dares to imagine and demand a different future for herself, boarding a train and fleeing westwards to Bombay.

There in the great modern metropolis of alluring opportunity, she seeks the means to live on her own terms. Unfazed by the everyday discriminations around her, Charu is a small hero, a railway woman who keeps her heart open – sometimes guilelessly – to her nation’s vast possibility.

Sweeping, elegiac and at times wonderfully comic, Railsong is a powerful portrait of a woman forging a life for herself amid the social and political upheavals of twentieth-century India.

Praise for Railsong

‘Magnificent. Railsong treads so lightly, and yet has such depth to it. I would follow Miss Chitol to the ends of the earth for the continued joy of her company.’
— Kamila Shamsie, Women’s Prize winning author of Home Fire

‘Few works capture, with such effectiveness, the profound political and social transformations of the last decades of the twentieth century — tracing their impact from the grassroots to the highest levels of society. Negotiating the subtle, intricate bond between the language of lived experience and the language of narration, Rahul Bhattacharya meets that challenge with remarkable assurance, Railsong a testament to the depth and brilliance of his craft. Charu’s solitude permeates the novel, even when she is surrounded by people, even when she performs every duty with care. Rarely has writing so comprehensively, and precisely captured this haunting feeling — the silent burden of the missing — that stands as the novel’s greatest achievement and its most profound triumph.’
– Vivek Shanbhag, author of Ghachar Ghochar

‘Rahul Bhattacharya is an extraordinary writer, and Railsong is a majestic yet profoundly tender novel. Vigorously alive to the currents of national change as well as to the tragedy, daring, humor, and love experienced in one woman’s days and years, Railsong bids us to observe the worth and intricacy of one person’s journey.”
— Megha Majumdar, New York Times bestselling author of A Burning

‘Rooted in the social history of the seventies to the nineties, when women’s lives were vibrant with change as they started to take their own decisions, the song of Charulata’s life on the railways is a simple but strong, echoing quest for freedom. Rahul Bhattacharya’s prose is so lyrical in tone, and intelligent in wit.’
— Volga, Sahitya Akademi Award winning author of The Liberation of Sita

‘Does anyone write better prose than Rahul Bhattacharya? Every word in this gorgeous, darting novel is a surprise. Bhattacharya has created an epic out of a single life.’
– Karan Mahajan, author of The Association of Small Bombs