Goodreads Monday: 22/9/2025

Goodreads Monday is now hosted by Budget Tales Book Club. All you have to do is show off a book from your TBR that you’re looking forward to reading.

Hello!

I hope everyone has had a good start to the week. I had a super busy day yesterday and with teaching today I am super tired and looking forward to an early night.

I bought this book when I was last in Bath and I am quite excited to read it but I will be honest the size of the book is rather daunting.

Great Eastern Hotel by Ruchir Joshi

A rich, teeming, involving epic of war, famine, love and culture-clash in imperial Calcutta during World War Two Joshi is The brand new experience after a megashow, Russian in size, Indian in soul’ (India Today)This is the second novel from Ruchir Joshi, author of The Last Jet-Engine Laugh which many stubbornly continue to believe is a twisted, flawed masterpiece of a debut novel. In India that book was greeted as the most significant Indian debut since Rushdie’s Midnights Children.Joshi is the real thing, and here to stay and thrive as a writer. This new book is a brilliant prospect, promising a rich, teeming, involving tale with an unusual, fascinating setting the fading imperial city of Calcutta in the 1940s, with world war, famine, culture-clash, colonial retreat, exile, rebellion, idealism and religious strife all in the mix.It will be less formally daring than his first (i.e. less jump-cutting time-wise), which, commercially speaking, is probably good news. And it will have all the epic sweep, resilience of the human spirit and war-torn romance that make for blockbuster success!

Happy Reading