Solo

The highly anticipated new novel from the critically acclaimed author of Tokyo Cancelled. Solo recounts the life and daydreams of a reclusive one hundred year-old man from Bulgaria. Before the man lost his sight, he read this story in a magazine: a group of explorers came upon a community of parrots speaking the language of a society that had been wiped out in a recent catastrophe. Astonished by their discovery, they put the parrots in cages and sent them home so that linguists could record what remained of the lost language. But the parrots, already traumatised by the devastation they had recently witnessed, died on the way. Wondering if, unlike the hapless parrots, he has any wisdom to leave to the world, Ulrich embarks on an epic armchair journey through a century of violent politics, forbidden music, lost love and failed chemistry, finding his way eventually to an astonishing epiphany of tenderness and enlightenment.

Literature & Fiction

Rana DasGupta

Contemporary

Fourth Estate

A major international debut from a storyteller who couples a timelessly beguiling style to an energetically modern worldscape. A cluster of passengers are stranded overnight in an airport en route to Tokyo, and they tell each other stories to enliven the waiting hours, stories that mesmerize, stories that resonate. Dasgupta's writing is utterly distinctive and fresh, so striking that it seems to come from the future and the past all at once, but in marrying a timeless mystery to an alert modernity, his cautionary tales manage to be reminiscent of both Ballard and Borges, depicting ordinary extraordinary individuals (some lost, some confused, some happy) in a world that remains ineffable, inexplicable, wonderful. This is a startling debut, certain to cause quite an impact, and surely the beginning of a significant literary career.

Tokyo Cancelled

4th Estate

Solo is a devastating and rapturous novel about the life and daydreams of Ulrich, a one hundred year-old man from Bulgaria.
 Before the man lost his sight, he read a story in a magazine. A group of explorers came upon a community of parrots speaking the language of a society that had been wiped out in a recent catastrophe. Astonished by this discovery, they put the parrots in cages and sent them home so that linguists might record what remained of the lost language. But the parrots, already traumatised by the devastation they had recently witnessed, died on the way. 
 Wondering if, unlike these hapless parrots, he has any wisdom to leave to the world, Ulrich embarks on an epic armchair journey through the twists and turns of his country's turbulent century -- and through his own lifetime of lost love and failed chemistry -- before finding his way to redemption and enlightenment. 
 Set in a country that has belonged sometimes to Asia and sometimes to Europe, Solo is a book about lost roots, broken traditions and wasted ambitions -- and the ways human beings overcome those failures.

HARPER/COLLINS

Thirteen passengers are stranded at an airport. Tokyo, their destination, is covered in snow and all flights are cancelled. To pass the night they form a huddle by the silent baggage carousels and tell one another stories. Thus begins Rana Dasgupta's Canterbury Tales for our times. In the spirit of Borges and Calvino, Dasgupta's writing combines an energetically modern landscape with a timeless, beguiling fairy-tale ethos, while bringing to life a cast of extraordinary individuals-some lost, some confused, some happy-in a world that remains ineffable, inexplicable, and wonderful. A Ukrainian merchant is led by a wingless bird back to a lost lover; Robert De Niro's son masters the transubstantiation of matter and turns it against his enemies; a man who manipulates other people's memories has to confront his own past; a Japanese entrepreneur risks losing everything in his obsession with a doll; a mute Turkish girl is left alone in the house of a German man who is mapping the world. Told by people on a journey, these are stories about lives in transit, stories that grow into an epic cycle about the hopes and dreams and disappointments that connect people everywhere.

British & Irish

Black Cat.

Hardback book on Indian economics, especially that of Delhi.

Capital

CANONGATE BOOKS *

Capital: The Eruption of Delhi

Politics & Social Sciences

Anthropology

Solo is a devastating and rapturous novel about the life and daydreams of Ulrich, a reclusive one hundred year-old man from Bulgaria.
Before the man lost his sight, he read this story in a magazine. A group of explorers came upon a community of parrots speaking the language of a society that had been wiped out in a recent catastrophe. Astonished by this discovery, they put the parrots in cages and sent them home so that linguists might record what remained of the lost language. But the parrots, already traumatised by the devastation they had recently witnessed, died on the way. Wondering if, unlike these hapless parrots, he has any wisdom to leave to the world, Ulrich embarks on an epic armchair journey through the twists and turns of his country’s turbulent century -- and through his own lifetime of lost love and failed chemistry -- and finds his way to an astonishing epiphany of redemption and enlightenment.
Set in a country that has belonged sometimes to Asia and sometimes to Europe, Solo is a book about lost roots, broken traditions and wasted ambitions -- and the depths of lyricism by which human beings overcome those failures.

Literary

HarperCollins, Publishers

Capital: A Portrait of Twenty-First Century Delhi

Capital: A Portrait Of Twenty-first Century Delhi

Sociology

The Text Publishing Co

The Cybermohalla project takes on the meaning of the Hindi word mohalla (neighborhood) in its sense of alleys and corners, relatedness and concreteness, as a means for talking about one's “place” in the city. Initiated by the Delhi-based research institute Sarai/CSDS and Ankur, Nikolaus Hirsch and Michel Müller developed a project that involves approximately seventy young practitioners, the Cybermohalla Ensemble, who engage with their urban contexts through various media. Cybermohalla Hub, a hybrid of studio, school, archive, community center, library, and gallery is a structure that moves between Delhi and diverse art contexts including Manifesta 7 and, most recently, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. 
The Cybermohalla experiment has been engaged in rethinking urban life, and reimagining and reanimating the infrastructure of cultural and intellectual life in contemporary cities. The book not only documents the architecture of the project, which functions as an attempt to “build knowledge,” but also publishes insights that have emerged from the project as a whole.
Contributors Can Altay, Cybermohalla Ensemble, Rana Dasgupta, Hu Fang, Naeem Mohaiemen, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jacques Rancière, Raqs Media Collective, Superflex, et al.

Cybermohalla Hub

Arts & Photography

Jacques Rancière

Hans-Ulrich Obrist

Naeem Mohaiemen

Hu Fang

Can Altay

Cybermohalla Ensemble

Superflex

Study & Teaching

Sternber Pr

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Books by Rana DasGupta