The very best work of the acclaimed humorist Shovon Chowdhury.
The author of the critically acclaimed dystopian novels The Competent Authority and Murder with Bengali Characteristics, Shovon Chowdhury was a writer with a razor-sharp wit whose work blended the bizarre with the profound. Part-jester, part-rationalist, he employed his terrific sense of humour (often directed at himself ) to put an absurd spin on reality. Besides generous excerpts from his widely praised novels, in the section entitled ‘The Investigator’ the book presents a selection from his longest-running column
with the tagline ‘We dig for the truth. So you don’t have to’; ‘We the People’ is a series of reactions to the increasingly bewildering political world; ‘The 4-Minute Manager™’ aims to make a management guru out of everyone; ‘Ask Uncle’ carries advice from your friendly neighbourhood uncle; ‘What If ’ presents alternate histories from the Chinese capturing Assam to Madhuri never performing ‘Ek, Do, Teen’ and more; also included are poetry and the previously unpublished piece, ‘I Lost My Trousers in Tiljala’.
Wildly funny, thought-provoking, and thoroughly entertaining, Truth Digger pays tribute to one of our finest comic writers.
Shovon Chowdhury (1964–2021) was a writer with a razor-sharp wit whose work blended the bizarre with the profound. His first novel, The Competent Authority, was a finalist for the Hindu Literary Prize, 2014, Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize, 2014, Crossword First Book Award, 2014, and Tata Literature Live! First Book Award, 2013.
Urmila Chowdhury is Director, Education, at Peepul, an education focused non-profit. She has thirty-three years of varied experience in education as a teacher, school leader, teacher trainer, a drama in education practitioner, and an ELT consultant. Urmila has worked in the social sector since 2009 with the belief that every child regardless of their background deserves a great education. She was married to Shovon Chowdhury for thirty-two years. Shovon took a deep interest in Urmila’s work and was her biggest cheerleader.
Sandipan Deb is an independent writer and editor. He has been editor of the Financial Express, managing editor of Outlook, and founder-editor of Outlook Money, Open, and Swarajya magazines. He is the author of several books, including The IITians: How an Indian Institution and Its Alumni Are Reshaping the World; Fallen Angel: The Making and Unmaking of Rajat Gupta; and The Last War, a novel reimagining the Mahabharata in the modern Mumbai underworld. He was the editor of Momentous Times, a volume to commemorate 175 years of the Times of India. His writings cover a broad spectrum, from economics to quantum physics, cricket to geopolitics, cinema to the future of technology.
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