Spanning a writing career of over twenty years, acclaimed novelist and author of Calcutta: Two Years in the City, Amit Chaudhuri, is also one of the most gifted essayists and critics writing today, whose work has appeared in the pages of many of the most prestigious newspapers and journals in the world, including The London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, Granta, the Guardian, and the Dublin Review. Collected here for the first time, Mere Writing is a selection of Chaudhuri's most enduring short non-fiction that showcases his sense of humour, his idiosyncratic capacity to transform the mundane, his political engagement, and his mastery of words. From playing 'Cowboys and Indians' as a child in India to an outsider's perspective on the British class system to a plane that was hijacked by Pakistani men and taken to Afghanistan at the turn of the millennium to the works of V. S Naipaul and to the humble Indian savoury, the chanachur, these essays display Chaudhuri's ability to find meaning in every aspect of the physical and intellectual world and will consolidate his reputation as one of most original and elegant writers publishing in English today.