Rajat Chaudhuri is an Indian novelist and short story writer. He is the author of the critically acclaimed works Hotel Calcutta (2013), a short story cycle; The Butterfly Effect (2018), the novel Amber Dusk (2007) and other books."Review of Hotel Calcutta at Asian Review of Books, 27 July 2013." Retrieved 20 September 2014."Review of The Butterfly Effect in Scroll." Retrieved 10 May 2019."Review of Amber Dusk, Indian Literature journal, Vol 52, No.3, Sahitya Akademi", Sahitya Akademi. Retrieved 20 September 2014. He is also an environment columnist,"Column articles in New Indian Express." Retrieved 3 December 2020 book reviewer and literary critic. His fiction blends persuasive storytelling "Paperback Pickings, Hotel Calcutta by Rajat Chaudhuri, The Telegraph.". Retrieved 14 June 2022."Hotel Calcutta by Rajat Chaudhuri, Reviewed by Shalini Mukerji, Asian Review of Books.". Retrieved 11 June 2022. with experiments in genre,"Opinion: 'Ants of God' — Novelists make climate change personal and capture wonders of warming planet, Amy Brady, Houston Chronicle.". Retrieved 11 June 2022. structure, form"An ecological dystopia comes to life in Rajat Chaudhuri's intricately structured novel, 'The Butterfly Effect', Priyadarsi Basu, Scroll.". Retrieved 11 June 2022. while addressing themes like climate change,"Goodbody, Axel. 'Cli-Fi beyond the American thriller: Cultural and aesthetic alternatives in climate change fiction since 2010', Nuevos horizontes de la literatura comparada (Vol. 2): Ecocrítica, 2021. (Spanish Society of General and Comparative Literature).". Retrieved 14 June 2022."Shome, Anindita. 'Dystopia, Climate Fiction and Globalisation: reading Rajat Chaudhuri's The Butterfly Effect', New Literaria 2nd International e-Conference.".Retrieved 11 June 2022."Article and interview of climate fiction (Cli-Fi) writers, Sonam Joshi, Times of India, 12 June 2022." Retrieved 1 September 2022. biotechnology,"Khan, Sami Ahmad, Star Warriors of the Modern Raj, University of Wales Press.".Retrieved 14 June 2022. urbanism,"Paul, Subhadeep. 'Palimpsestic Jungle/Jumble: Visceral Urbanism in Rajat Chaudhuri's Hotel Calcutta', The City Speaks-Urban Spaces in Indian Literature, Edited by Subashish Bhattacharjee, Goutam Karmakar, Routledge India.".Retrieved 10 June 2022."The City Speaks-Urban Spaces in Indian Literature, Edited by Subashish Bhattacharjee, Goutam Karmakar, Taylor & Francis Ltd (Verlag).".Retrieved 10 June 2022. and genetic engineering."How horribly wrong can experiments in science go, Priyadarsi Basu, Scroll.".Retrieved 11 June 2022. His fiction has been featured in the climate change video game Survive the Century."Official website, Survive the Century." Retrieved 1 June 2021."Video game review, Input magazine." Retrieved 1 June 2021."News, University of Cape Town." Retrieved 1 June 2021."Online game 'Survive the Century' shows ordinary people what they can do about climate change, South China Morning Post." Retrieved 3 June 2021.
Early life and education Rajat Chaudhuri grew up and lives in Kolkata. He attended school at Ramakrishna Mission Vidyalaya and studied Economics at University of Calcutta.
Career He is a bilingual writer writing in English and Bengali. His books include the novel Amber Dusk (2007), the short story cycle Hotel Calcutta (2013), and Calculus (2014), a collection of Bengali short stories.
He is the Charles Wallace Creative Writing Fellow (2014) of the University of Chichester, United Kingdom, Hawthornden Castle Fellow, Scotland, United Kingdom, and a past of Fellow of Sangam House International Writers' Residency (2010), India."Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship in Creative Writing at University of Chichester ". Retrieved 19 September 2014."Profile and report at Arts Council Korea (ARKO) webzine, Nov 2013". Retrieved 19 September 2014."Profile at Sangam House". Retrieved 19 September 2014. He is a Korean Arts Council-InKo sponsored resident writer (2013) of Toji Cultural Centre, which was set up by acclaimed Korean novelist Park Kyung-ni.
His fiction, criticism and essays have appeared in publications including Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi),"Indian Literature", Sahitya-akademi.gov.in Asian Review of Books (Hong Kong), American Book Review (University of Houston-Victoria)," Chitpur Local and the Rip Van Winkles of Calcutta. Volume 36, Number 6, September/October 2015, pp. 7-23." doi:10.1353/abr.2015.0117. Retrieved 2 April 2016. Thresholds (University of Chichester),""Three Stories of Love", Thresholds, University of Chichester, 2015". Retrieved December 2015 Eclectica, Outlook magazine and GalaxiesSF (French).
Chaudhuri has been involved with environment and development related activism and has contributed to the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report."UNDP Human Development Report 1998", United Nations Development Programme. Retrieved 19 September 2014. He lobbies for and supports environment related causes.
He has worked for and nurtured development, environment and consumer rights groups, and has spoken about environment and sustainable consumption issues in venues within and outside the country. He has published books, monographs and papers on such topics as the right to water, sustainable food futures, sustainable consumption, and green advertisements."Water: What are our Rights to it?" Water: What are our Rights to it? Retrieved 10 October 2014."Green Advertisements – Are they Telling the Truth?" Retrieved 10 October 2014."Sustainable agrifood systems for a post-growth world. Coauthored, Nature Sustainability, August 2022." Retrieved 6 September 2022.
Chaudhuri has also served as the developing country (Southern) coordinator on the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) NGO caucus for climate change and energy."Guidelines for Major Groups on CSD 9". Retrieved 19 September 2014. He has appeared in environment, science fiction and international cultural meetings and communication fora like Escape Velocity organised by Museum of Science Fiction in Washington D.C., International Communication Association (ICA) events and other places speaking about biotechnology in fiction, sustainability narratives and allied issues while doing readings from his books.Rajat Chaudhuri, Escape Velocity 2019", Retrieved 06 June 2019.Rajat Chaudhuri, The Butterfly Effect", Retrieved 6 June 2019. Chaudhuri has lectured and spoken to different audiences on the role of literature and storytelling in understanding and engaging with the climate crisis in programmes of the University of Oxford, Open University (UK) and University of London (School of Advanced Study)."Rajat Chaudhuri, Tutor, University of Oxford, Climate and Literature Lecture". Retrieved 18 September 2022."Rajat Chaudhuri, Climate Change, University of Oxford (UK), Climate and Literature Lecture". Retrieved 18 September 2022"Contemporary Cultures of Writing Seminar Series Autumn 2021 - Climate change and creativity, Open University (UK)". Retrieved 15 October 2021."Climate Change and Creativity: Round table discussion, School of Advanced Study, University of London (UK)". Retrieved 15 October 2021.
Spellcasters A desert town and two Indian metropolises is the setting for a high-stakes game of intrigue, deception and mind-control where a journalist named Chanchal Mitra is caught in the duel of powerful forces. As the novel progresses, a mysterious woman with eyes dark as murder, a billionaire industry captain, a crutch-clutching ex-sailor, and extreme climate change events come into play. Described as a climate adventure while acknowledging its debt to works on psychedelic drugs and occult traditions, the book according to public interviews by the author engages with consumer culture, mental disorders and the secret forces battling for control of minds. Spellcasters has been described as 'part psychological-thriller and part climate fiction'. The book has been described by Amitav Ghosh as 'A phantasmagoric journey through an alternative reality of collapsed time, hallucinatory visions and spectral visitations...'
The Climate Crossroads: Literature's Encounter with a Planet on Fire A narrative non-fiction work of literary and cultural criticism examining the relationship between literature, climate change, environmental activism, and philosophical thought. Combining memoir, autoethography, literary analysis, history, and environmental humanities, the book reflects on the author's experiences as a writer of climate fiction and environmental activist while exploring how storytelling shapes public understanding of ecological crisis. Drawing connections between subjects like protest actions targeting artworks such as Vincent van Gogh's "Sunflowers", myths from the Sundarbans, Chinese weather records, and contemporary farmers' movements in India, often using the lens of fiction, the book situates climate literature within broader political and cultural debates about justice, aesthetics and planetary crisis. It studies selected climate novels through popular as well as novel theoretical frameworks including Kantian ethics, Russian formalism and the Freudian uncanny, analysing how literature provides imaginative and emotional tools for confronting the realities of planetary change and environmental catastrophe.
The Butterfly Effect At the centre of a near-future, post-apocalyptic Darkland is the chaotic city of Calcutta. Here Captain Old, a retired policeman who is also a hired assassin receives news that could help unravel the roots of a scourge that has devastated the continent. But problems begin to pile up for him till his own life is at stake. In another narrative we find a group of Indian tourists disappearing in Korea and a detective arriving in Seoul to investigate. But soon the private eye is overwhelmed by incidents that is far beyond his ken as a crime investigator.
Meanwhile in England there is a hotshot geneticist working away on a secret project which he believes could change the world. Each of these distinct but interconnected narratives, arranged in a Russian doll"Book Excerpt, Scroll.in", Retrieved 29 September 2018. structure, mingle with each other as we near the resolution of this work of speculative fiction which balances science, spirituality and a gentle way of life. This novel has been compared to Philip K. Dick's Blade Runner (based on Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) for its dystopian settings."Calcutta in Dark Sci in Outlook Magazine, February 2019", Retrieved 2 March 2019."", Retrieved 27 February 2019. This book has been listed by Book Riot community as one of "50 must-read novels about eco-disaster"."50 Must Read Novels about Eco-Disaster, Book Riot, April 2019", Retrieved 6 June 2019.
The Butterfly Effect is a novel about the effect of intertwined disasters. In an interview to researcher and author Sami Ahmad Khan published in the book Star Warriors of the Modern Raj-Materiality, Mythology and Technology of Indian Science Fiction (University of Wales Press) Chaudhuri, speaking about genetic engineering has said, 'A GM mediated disaster could quickly go out of hand especially if it happens in the backdrop of major natural catastrophes (climate related) or say war...'"Star Warriors of the Modern Raj-Materiality, Mythology and Technology of Indian Science Fiction, Sami Ahmad Khan, University of Wales Press, April 2019", Retrieved 25 August 2022.
Wonder Tales for a Warming Planet