Set in 1950s Calcutta, this is a saga of the intimate lives of managers, employees and guests at one of Calcutta's largest hotels, the Shahjahan.

Despite its importance to literary and cultural texts of resistance, theater has been largely overlooked as a field of analysis in colonial and postcolonial studies. Acts of Authority/Acts of Resistance seeks to address that absence, as it uniquely views drama and performance as central to the practice of nationalism and anti-colonial resistance. Nandi Bhatia argues that Indian theater was a significant force in the struggle against oppressive colonial and postcolonial structures, as it sought to undo various schemes of political and cultural power through its engagement with subjects derived from mythology, history, and available colonial models such as Shakespeare. Bhatia's attention to local histories within a postcolonial framework places performance in a global and transcultural context. Drawing connections between art and politics, between performance and everyday experience, Bhatia shows how performance often intervened in political debates and even changed the course of politics. One of the first Western studies of Indian theater to link the aesthetics and the politics of that theater, Acts of Authority/Acts of Resistance combines in-depth archival research with close readings of dramatic texts performed at critical moments in history. Each chapter amplifies its themes against the backdrop of specific social conditions as it examines particular dramatic productions, from The Indigo Mirror to adaptations of Shakespeare plays by Indian theater companies, illustrating the role of theater in bringing nationalist, anticolonial, and gendered struggles into the public sphere. Nandi Bhatia is Associate Professor of English at the University of Western Ontario.

In 1938, when faced with a decision to work at a shoe company in India or stay in Czechoslovakia and wait for another war, Miki Hruska’s newly married parents opted to move, thinking they would return home in a few years. But they would not be able to return “home” for another four decades; instead, home became Calcutta, where they raised their family and established a business during a parade of turbulent social and political events. The ill-planned departure of the British from India and their bungled attempts at Partition engendered riots and killings that brought bloodshed to the family’s front door. And when the Communists took over the government of West Bengal, they brought labour disruptions that made it next to impossible to operate the family business. This riveting family memoir is set during the cataclysmic events of WWII and its aftermath, giving a harrowing yet heartwarming portrait of life for a migrant Czech family and showing how perseverance and love can sustain people through the darkest of times.