Neel Mukherjee

‘The greatest strength of Mukherjee’s searing first novel is its astonishing ability to produce the literary equivalent of cinéma vérité, because he can uncannily capture a street, a smell, a snatch of song with wordplay that can sting your memories into a renaissance. But this is not to say that the novel is geo-culturally delimited; Mukherjee debuts impressively with a blistering pen that lacerates afresh every wounded recollection that it uncovers. … A scorcher.’ India Today.

‘ … well written … excellent … an engaging novel. Mukherjee’s achievement is to have written an eminently readable immigrant novel. In the process, he is able to bring to light the fickleness and flimsiness of the idea of love and happiness in terms of a young man’s search for home. … A naturally good writer.’ Tehelka.

‘A writer of skill, imagination and ambition. Like a master weaver, Neel Mukherjee spins a tale of interweaving warp and weft, moving backward and forward in time and place, … easily shifting narrative as it ties up the threads of different tales, tossing in history, myth and collective memory … and drawing parallels within each narrative.’ Mint.

‘There is a bitterness — almost savage in its quality — about Neel Mukherjee’s debut novel that wrenches the reader out of his comfort zone. The only way to engage with this book would have to be from the gut-level.’ The Telegraph.

‘Brilliant and disturbing … Instead of the cloying nostalgia that fills so much diasporic fiction, we have a hard, painful hatred, a desire to burn the past into the bitter ashes of the cremation-ground. … Intensely imagined, densely populated … the narrative is taut with possibility. … Past Continuous makes us uncomfortable, unsettles our confidence in persons and places, but it also excites us with the tension and hope of literary as well as existential risk-taking.’ Biblio. (To read this exceptional essay by Supriya Chaudhuri, click here.)

‘Not very often do we come across a novel so intense, thoughtful and one that runs on so many levels simultaneously. … Past Continuous is an engaging and powerful work of art.’ The Tribune.

‘Cleverly crafted and impeccably written, the book refuses to be put down till the end.’ Marie Claire.