ABOUT THE BOOK

In a house on a Calcutta street, lit by the half-light of a yellow street lamp, lies a baby, one day old, wrapped in its hospital towel. In the next room sits a man, all alone, writing. Who is this man, at once frightened and determined? What is he writing? Where has the baby come from and where will it go? Tonight, these questions will be answered when the man unravels the dark secrets he has carried all his life.

Raj Kamal Jha was born in 1966 and spend his first eighteen years in Calcutta. He returned to the city in 1992 as an editor with the Statesman. He now lives in New Delhi, where he is an editor on the Indian Express. The Blue Bedspread won the 1999 Common-wealth Writer's Prize for Best First Book (Eurasia).

 

Here are some readers' comments on The Blue Bedspread:

"This debut novel by Raj Kamal Jha is set in Calcutta.

A middle-aged man finds himself in charge of his dead sister's one-day-old baby girl. The baby is due to be handed over to adoptive parents in twenty-four hours. The man decides to write a series of stories relating to life as it was lived by himself and his sister so that in time to come this child will know from whence it came.

Interestingly, none of the characters referred to in the novel has been given a name but lose nothing by this omission.The stories are a mixture of fact and fantasy but become for the writer a form of therapy and a purging of troubled memories.

Jha uses a precise prose style, no words wasted and highly effective.
I found it a very interesting treatment of a disturbing theme."

(A member of Raheny Library Reading Group.)

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"Raj Kamal is brilliant author of 21 century. His work reflect the present family issue of the society and confidence of hope. "

Maheshwar Agrawal