'Riveting story, intelligently told with sly humour' - Kunal Basuxml: namespace prefix = o ns = "urn: schemas-microsoft-com: office: office" /

'Avik Chanda's debut novel is a relentless, heartbreaking roller-coaster played out against the ticking of a clock, which grows ever more ominous as the hours go by, minute by minute. His is a tale of greed, terror and death, but also of heroism and love.

Chanda's exploration of the depths of man's inhumanity is made even more stark by passages of quiet beauty that take the breath away.' - Joan Harcourt, Literary Editor, Queen's Quarterly

A firebrand ex-Naxal who seems to have gone missing at a critical juncture. A veteran journalist accompanied by a young and naive sub-editor determined to find the truth.

A suave but ruthless politician with a hidden agenda, equally determined to stop the truth from getting out. A gang of hardened criminals ready to do his bidding in cohorts with the police.

Helpless villagers who are mere pawns in a bigger game. And a group of anxious editors waiting in the claustrophobic newsroom of The Sentinel for the night to pass and the next day's 'anchor' to unfold in the killing fields of a village on the outskirts of Kolkata.

Over the course of an unforgettable, stifling, rain-soaked night, the lives of these characters intertwine, clash and are changed inexorably. In Anchor, Avik Chanda presents a picture of Kolkata in the late 1990s, and serving as its foil, a tiny fictional village, where people risk losing their homes, land - and finally, even their lives.