Past Continuous-------pan macmillan

Ritwik Ghosh, twenty-two, recently orphaned and lonely as hell, finds a chance to start his life all over again when he arrives in England to study. But the past won’t leave him alone, especially his scarred relationship with his mother. From a student in Oxford to a member of the shadowy world of illegal immigrants in London, working either in strawberry fields in Kent and East Anglia or selling himself at King’s Cross, his life goes into free fall. Meanwhile, Ritwik’s story alternates with the story he’s writing: a story about an English governess in the old world of Bengal, in the first decade of the twentieth century on the eve of India’s first partition. As his real life begins to pick up ghostly echoes from the story he is writing, it is no longer clear which one he is making up . . .

‘Searing. He can uncannily capture a street, a smell, a snatch of a song with wordplay that can sting your memories into a renaissance. Mukherjee debuts impressively with a blistering pen that lacerates afresh every wounded recollection that it uncovers’—India Today

‘A writer of skill, imagination and ambition.’—Mint‘Not very often do we come across a novel so intense and thoughtful and one that runs on so many levels simultaneously. Past Continuous is an engaging and powerful work of art.’—The Tribune

‘There is a bitterness—almost savage in its quality—about Neel Mukherjee’s debut novel. The only way to engage with this book would have to be from the gut-level.’—Telegraph

‘Intensely imagined, densely populated . . . the narrative is taut with possibility. This is a brilliant and disturbing first novel. Past Continuous makes us uncomfortable, unsettles our confidence in persons and places, but it also excites us with the tension and hope of literary as well as existential risk-taking.’—Biblio