Railsong - Hardcover

Name: Railsong - Hardcover
Brand: BooksCloud
SKU: 9781639736225
Price: 29.99 USD
Availability: InStock

by Rahul Bhattacharya

$29.99

Book Overview

"Magnificent . . . I would follow Miss Chitol to the ends of the earth." -Kamila Shamsie

"Profoundly tender [and] vigorously alive to the currents of national change." -Megha Majumdar

A breathtaking novel about a woman forging a life for herself on the railways, Railsong is the heartwarming story of an individual coming of age amid the social and political upheavals of twentieth-century India.

In a newly independent India charged with national vigour, Charu, the motherless daughter of a railway worker, pines for freedom from the shackles of her impoverishment and meagre prospects. As diesel engines replace steam and the calamitous churn of drought, famine, and a great strike engulfs her town, Charu dares to imagine a different future for herself. She boards a train and flees westwards, leaving behind the oppressive domesticity of her childhood for the alluring modernity, and apparent opportunities, of Bombay.

Unfazed by the everyday discriminations around her she becomes an unlikely hero: a railway woman and census enumerator who keeps her heart open-sometimes guilelessly-to her nation's vast possibility. Sweeping, elegiac, and at times wonderfully comic, Railsong is a powerful portrait of grit, optimism, and the force of character that enables one remarkable woman to live on her own terms in a country full of contradictions.

ISBN	9781639736225
Author	Rahul Bhattacharya
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing
Genre	Literature
Format	Hardcover
Published	February 2026
Language	ENG- English
Pages	416
Weight	1.0 lb
Target Audience	Adults
Print Size	Standard Print