Old Snapshots in New Album: Realism in Amit Chaudhuri’s A New World

Abstract

Abstract

Amit Chaudhuri’s fourth novel A New World (2000), attempts to map out the nation, and its changing cultural configurations through the story of a globalised Bengali middleclass family of Calcutta. The novel is a narrative about a thirty-seven year old Indian economist and University Professor, who returns from the United States to his native India with his son Vikram, nick-named as Bonny. The novel spans Jayojit’s visit to Calcutta, a year after his divorce to visit his parents for a few months. The novel begins with Jayojit’s arrival in his old world and ends with his departure from it. Chaudhuri’s himself says that he is writing about the experiences of the real people especially of Bengali middle-class people. The novel clearly portrays the effect of globalization upon the characters. Thus, the novel is a moving realistic account of life of Jayojit whose visit to his parents’ home in Calcutta acts as a tool to explore the rift between generations and cultures. Keywords: Realism, Globalisation, Modernization Realism in literature is an approach that attempts to describe life without idealization or romantic subjectivity. “Chaudhuri himself admits, where the West ends in us and the East begins and vice versa, the novelists for his realism leans more on the West and for his representative modes more on the East (2004:8)”.