''Days and Nights in Calcutta'' is a work of memoir by husband-and-wife authors

Clark Blaise Clark Blaise, OC (born April 10, 1940) is a Canadian-American author. He was a professor of creative writing at York University, and a writer of short fiction. In 2010, he was named an Officer of the Order of Canada. Early life and education ...

and

Bharati Mukherjee Bharati Mukherjee (July 27, 1940 – January 28, 2017) was an Indian American-Canadian writer and professor emerita in the department of English at the University of California, Berkeley. She was the author of a number of novels and short story ...

first published by Doubleday in 1977. Blaise, a Canadian author, and

Mukherjee Mukherjee, Mukerjee, Mookerjee, Mukerji, Mukherji, Mukhujje or Mookherjee is a Kulin Brahmin surname of the Hindu Religion, common among residents of the Indian state of West Bengal. The traditional Bengali version is ''Mukhopaddhae'', which is s ...

, originally from the Indian state of

West Bengal West Bengal (, Bengali: ''Poshchim Bongo'', , abbr. WB) is a state in the eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabitants within an area of . West Bengal is the fourt ...

, had been married for a decade when they decided in 1973 to travel with their two children to India and spend a year in Calcutta (now

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

) with Mukherjee's family. The first half of the book is told from Blaise's point of view as a Westerner adjusting to life with a large upper-class Indian family and the unfamiliar traditions and patterns of life he found in India. The second half is told from Mukherjee's perspective after fourteen years' absence from the land of her birth, testing her childhood memories against the realities of 1973 India and examining the differences between the path her life had followed and the life she might have lived had she remained in India. The first American paperback edition, published in 1995 by Hungry Mind Press included a new prologue by Blaise and new epilogue by Mukherjee, providing additional perspective on the visit to India the pair had made more than two decades before.

External links

Powells book review
1977 non-fiction books Asian-American literature Works by Bharati Mukherjee Doubleday (publisher) books {{AsianAmerican-stub