Chaudhuri is a phenomenon. Among the best novelists writing in English, he is also a singer, an essayist, and a critic. Now comes this selection of poems spanning decades.’ —Michael Autrey, Booklist.

‘The whole universe is here, ’ writes Amit Chaudhuri in his poem, 'Sweet Shop'. Now the entire range of his work as a poet is available in Sweet Shop: New and Selected Poems 19852023, part of the New York Review Books 'Poets' series published in October 2023 in India, the US, and the UK. If you are interested in reading and writing poetry and want to find out more about what the journey of a single poem entails, as well as the journey involved in a lifetime spent with poetry, join us for a discussion with the poet, novelist, essayist and musician. Prof. Chaudhuri will read from his selected poems, share thoughts about the creative process, and reflect on what 'being a poet', a construction disavowed by Philip Larkin, today might mean. Students are encouraged to badger him with questions about the 'poetic'.

Bio Amit Chaudhuri is the author of eight novels. He is also a poet, critic, essayist, short story writer, and musician. His fourth book of poems, Sweet Shop: New and Selected Poems, was published in 2023 in the New York Review Books Poets series. Faber released the full set of the fiction he has published in the last thirty years over 202223 in the UK; his first three novels are to be published in the New York Review Books Classics imprint in May this year with new introductions by Colm Toibin, James Wood, and Wendy Doniger.

Awards for his fiction and nonfiction include the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the James Tait Black Prize, the Encore Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, and the Government of India’s Sahitya Akademi Award. Recognition for his criticism include the inaugural Infosys Prize in Literary Studies in the Humanities and the Government of West Bengal's Rabindra Puraskar.

In 2018, he received the Government of West Bengal's Sangeet Samman for his contribution to Hindustani classical music.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an honorary fellow of the Modern Language Association of America.