"Everything that could possibly be wrong with a city was wrong with Calcutta." And yet, after completing his education in the States, Kushunava Choudhury embodied his parents' greatest fears by returning to the city they escaped for a better life. Arriving with grand plans, the flaws in which could not be detected while making them in the States, Choudhury returned to live in a city of concrete, mildewed buildings, political graffiti, jobless men arguing with the newspaper headlines in their pyamas, bazaars full of squatting fish-sellers, Communist bureaucrats increasingly accustomed to luxury, and ubiquitous, inescapable grime. Sifting through the chaos and decay for those stories that are ignored by the papers, that don't fall into any reporter's beat, The Epic City is a soulful, insightful and meticulously researched account of everyday lives and an extraordinary portrait of a city which is a world unto itself.