A Matter of Rats

"An intimate and whimsical book, but one that truly shines when the author turns his gaze to the ordinary people who still live in Patna . . . skillfully evoking the circumstances of chaos, filth and absurdity in which even the city’s middle-class professionals are forced to live." - Sonia Faleiro, New York Times Book Review

“E. B. White composed Here Is New York, his fraught love letter to Manhattan, during a heat wave in the summer of 1948. Sixty-four years later, the book served as a ‘secret talisman’ for Amitava Kumar, who carried it with him into the heat and humidity of his hometown, Patna, in India, as he wrote A Matter of Rats, an equally cleareyed ode to a similarly implausible place.” - Maud Newton, New York Times Magazine

"Amitava Kumar writes with such generosity, intelligence, precision, and wit that we come to recognize the world he portrays and the heart he excavates as our own. In prose that's riveting and blow-your-mind perceptive, Kumar vividly brings his childhood home of Patna, India, to life. A Matter of Rats will make you laugh and cry and shake your head in astonishment and horror and delight. This is a book for all of us, now." - Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“This new look at an ancient city transports readers on a fun journey. Lovers of travel writing, Indian history, and fans of literature will greatly enjoy this short book. . . .” - Melissa Aho, Library Journal

"A Matter of Rats is disconcerting, sophisticated, and recklessly courageous. The stories gathered here bring Patna to life, and accrete to an almost unbearable intensity." - Teju Cole, author of Open City

"Pound for pound, Amitava Kumar is one of the best nonfiction writers of his generation. . . . No one in India writes a more fine-grained and quietly evocative prose. . . . In his marvelous new work A Matter of Rats: A Short Biography of Patna, Kumar puts a stethoscope to his hometown and takes a reading of its heart." - Siddharth Chowdhury, Time Out Delhi

"A Matter of Rats is a a wonderfully witty, poignant and idiosyncratic performance, full of surreal details and the oddest and most delicious digressions. Part memoir, part history, part biography of a rat-infested city in spectacular decline, Amitava Kuma has produced an enjoyably eloquent, gossipy, and discursive portrait of his love/hate relationship with his benighted birthplace." - William Dalrymple

“There's much more to Patna than rats, of course, and Kumar touches on its ancient glory and later role in the East India Company's opium trade. He also writes eloquently about writing itself, and the meaning of place.”
- Nina Shengold, Chronogram

"If you haven't read any of Amitava Kumar's books, you must. . . . The insightful and keen observer walks us through the streets of one of the world's oldest cities while chancing up with rats, of course, and poets, artists and politicians, a girl's picture in a historian's study, a sheet of paper on his mother's desk, and a whole lot more. It's a quick and delightful read, as all Kumar's books are." - Nitish Rele, Khaas Baat

"Kumar is alert to the signs of life coming from sometimes unanticipated directions. . . . This refusal of pessimism is one of the refreshing elements of Kumar’s writing. While there is always plenty of bad news in Patna, he insists on the presence of joy — an emotion that, rare as it is, 'is as real as suffering' — even in surprising places. He poignantly describes incidents of everyday compassion and of the sacrifices of teachers, doctors, and activists. Each crisis or injustice, it seems, has sparked its own rebels, some noisy, others quiet." - David Boyk, Los Angeles Review of Books

“[T]he reader not only will be entertained with gossips about many people, but can also learn a lot about Bihar, caste and Hindi, and also Patna, rats and the art of writing.” - Werner Menski, South Asia Research

“This book has something for everyone – historical tales, reflection on current India, guidance on writing and as a map for someone planning to visit Patna." - Rajdeep Pakanati, Contemporary South Asia