Sarnath Banerjee

In the heart of Lutyens' Delhi sits Jehangir Rangoonwalla, enlightened dispenser of tea, wisdom, and second-hand books. Among his customers are Brighu, a postmodern Ibn Batuta looking for obscure collectibles and a love life; Digital Dutta who lives mostly in his head, torn between Karl Marx and an H1-B visa; and the newly-married Shintu, looking for the ultimate aphrodisiac in the seedy by-lanes of old Delhi. Played out in the corridors of Connaught Place and Calcutta, the story captures the alienation and fragmented reality of urban life through an imaginative alchemy of text and image.

Corridor

A Homeric tale of a man's journey to the centre of the earth in search of the mythical river Saraswati, this graphic novel is set against the fictitious yet ever-so-real Water Wars of Delhi. It is a dystopian landscape where neighbourhoods fight brutal battles against each other and even victory must end in defeat.

All Quiet in Vikaspuri

Calcutta, XVIIIe siècle. La seconde capitale de l'Empire bruit de scandales. Abravanel Ben Obadiah Ben Aharon Kabariti, Juif de Syrie et négociant en frivolités, aphrodisiaques, zèbres, côtoie les officiers coloniaux et les élites locales, dont il consigne chaque nuit les écarts de conduite dans un journal relié plein cuir intitulé Les Tribulations du Chat-Huant. Paris, années 50. Un exemplaire de ce très rare ouvrage refait surface dans une brocante de Montmartre. Londres, 2002. Tard le soir, un téléphone sonne dans l'East End. Pablo, un jeune Indien, apprend la mort de son grand-père, qui lui lègue un poste de radio, une moto vintage et son exemplaire des précieuses Tribulations du Chat-Huant. La suite est une chaîne d'évènements bizarres impliquant des Babus excentriques, un aristocrate obsédé par les footballeuses, l'inventeur de la cartographie psychique, un building de bureaux hanté, et au centre de tout, Digital Dutta, voyageur immobile et gardien de mille secrets. Un étourdissant tourbillon d'époques, de faits et de révélations, destiné à mettre à nu les rouages subtils du Raj britannique et d'une ville-monde, Calcutta, dont aucune littérature n'a épuisé les charmes ni les mystères.

Calcutta

"The Greater Harappa Rehabilitation, Reclamation and Redevelopment Committee (GHRRRC) has conducted a gigantic survey of the current ethnography and urban mythology of a country on the brink of great hormonal changes. Changes of such enormity that they would be barely comprehensible to civil society. And now, the decade-long findings are finally going to be made public by one Sri Sarnath Banerjee, who has created the Harappa Files, a series of graphic commentaries that analyse the cracks in postliberalized India. Although impressed by the far-sightedness of the government in setting up the GHRRRC, Banerjee has one niggling concern: he is worried that the consequence of his project will be the release of the dreaded Harappa recommendations, making it mandatory for all citizens to sign the draconian, ultrainvasive Form 28B, giving the government the power to decide the fate of every single citizen"--Publisher's website.

The Harappa Files

Eighteenth-Century Calcutta. The Second City Of The Empire Is Teeming With Scandalous Gossip And Rumour. Abravanel Ben Obadiah Ben Aharon Kabariti, Sephardic Jew From Syria And Trader In Novelties Such As Corsets, Aphrodisiacs And Zebras, Befriends The British Officers And The Local Elite By Day And Records Their Escapades By Night In A Leather-Bound Journal. 1950S Paris. A Battered Copy Of The Journal Surfaces In A Hole-In-The-Wall Antique Shop In Montmartre. London, 2002. A Phone Rings In The East End, Late At Night, Announcing A Death And An Inheritance: A Silver Lighter, A Vintage Motorcycle, An Ancient Radio And The Barn Owl'S Wondrous Capers. What Follows Is A Bizarre Chain Of Events Involving Eccentric Zamindars, A Decadent Aristocrat With A Passion For Lady Footballers, A Psychic Cartographer, A Haunted Office Building And, At The Centre Of It All, Digital Dutta, Neighbourhood Historian And Keeper Of Secrets. Inspired By The Legend Of The Wandering Jew, This Second Work Of Fiction From India'S Foremost Graphic Novelist Is An Irreverent Tale Of Illicit Sex And Drunken Religiosity, Which Unravels New Riddles With Each Reading.

Sarnath Banerjee

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