Between the Notes

In A Lost People's Archive, Rimli Sengupta combines imagination and history to tell a very personal tale of the Partition of Bengal

- Rimi B. Chatterjee

A LOST PEOPLE'S ARCHIVE

A Novel

by Rimli Sengupta

ALEPH BOOK COMPANY

₹699; 232 pages

I can attest that historical fiction is one of the hardest genres to write. You have to research your subject like a career scholar, and then render down all these unwieldy lumps of fact into a smooth, tasty fictional broth that goes down easy. You don't have footnotes to back you up, which means you can't explain yourself. You walk this tightrope carefully, knowing that on one side you risk a tumble on the hard rocks of geeking out on your material, and on the other you are menaced by the tar pits of pandering to popular taste.