Overview

'Magnificent' KAMILA SHAMSIE 'Majestic yet profoundly tender' MEGHA MAJUMDAR A breathtaking novel about a woman forging a life for herself on the railways, Railsong is the story of an individual coming of age amid the social and political upheavals of twentieth-century India. In a newly independent India charged with national vigour, Charu, the motherless daughter of a railway worker, pines for freedom from the shackles of her impoverishment and meagre prospects. As diesel engines replace steam and the calamitous churn of drought, famine and a great strike engulfs her town, Charu dares to imagine a different future for herself. She boards a train and flees westwards, leaving behind the oppressive domesticity of her childhood for the alluring modernity, and apparent opportunities, of Bombay. Unfazed by the everyday discriminations around her, she becomes an unlikely hero: a railway woman and census enumerator 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 grit, optimism and the force of character that enables one remarkable woman to live on her own terms in a country full of contradictions.

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9781037206580

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Reviews

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, humour 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 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, internationally bestselling and Women's Prize for Fiction-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 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 Rahul Bhattacharya’s Railsong is a novel of rare attentiveness - to the turns of a life, to the slow sediment of time. It creates an extraordinary archive from a single life, thick with everydayness, layered with complexity and profundity. Even when I wasn’t reading, I found myself thinking about the world of Railsong, for in Ms. Chitol, Bhattacharya gives us a heroine to hold in one’s heart -- Aanchal Malhotra, author of THE BOOK OF EVERLASTING THINGS Sublime … In revisiting the political and social history of modern India through the shifting fates of the Chitol family, Bhattacharya sets a benchmark for storytelling, distilling his extensive research into a form that turns even bureaucratic trivia into absorbing plot points … His protagonist, Miss Chitol, will be remembered as one of the most convincingly real female characters written by a male writer … A page turner until the very end * Mint *

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, humour 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 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, internationally bestselling and Women's Prize for Fiction-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 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 Rahul Bhattacharya’s Railsong is a novel of rare attentiveness - to the turns of a life, to the slow sediment of time. It creates an extraordinary archive from a single life, thick with everydayness, layered with complexity and profundity. Even when I wasn’t reading, I found myself thinking about the world of Railsong, for in Ms. Chitol, Bhattacharya gives us a heroine to hold in one’s heart -- Aanchal Malhotra, author of THE BOOK OF EVERLASTING THINGS Sublime … In revisiting the political and social history of modern India through the shifting fates of the Chitol family, Bhattacharya sets a benchmark for storytelling, distilling his extensive research into a form that turns even bureaucratic trivia into absorbing plot points … His protagonist, Miss Chitol, will be remembered as one of the most convincingly real female characters written by a male writer … A page turner until the very end * Mint * I will read Rahul Bhattacharya’s shopping list if he doesn’t write anything else, but fortunately, 2025 wasn’t one of those years. In Railsong, his heroine Charu takes a train – not once but many times. A history and a geography of the country seeps out of this crazily readable novel directly into the part of the brain where memorable novels life. Indeed, this is the book we could well remember this year for * India Today *

Author Information

Rahul Bhattacharya is a writer, journalist, and editor. His first novel, The Sly Company of People Who Care, won the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. Pundits from Pakistan, his first book, was a Wisden Cricketer top ten cricket book of all time. He was born in Bombay and lives in Delhi with his wife and two daughters.

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