PositiveWall Street Journal...he presents a memoir of sorts, meditating on Calcutta through his own changing relationship to the city. The book interleaves his experiences as a boy brought up partly in the family’s ancestral house; as a recent college graduate working at the Statesman newspaper; and as a fledgling author who moves to Calcutta with his new, Delhi-raised wife ... The Epic City has a meandering structure, and Mr. Choudhury’s swerves from one topic or moment to another can sometimes wrong-foot the reader. His blend of memoir and reportage has the advantage, however, of letting him slip between the gates of so much writing about Calcutta—nostalgic evocations of a fading cosmopolis on one side and 'the trope of an urban hellhole' on the other.
