About the Book
Brunching with Ophelia presents a slice of life entrenched in
cultural schizophrenia in our capital city, New Delhi. As Ivy
Roy, a lecturer of English literature, virtually resurrects Ophelia,
the almost aphasic woman behind the universal man screaming “Words,
Words, Words”, her now husband and erstwhile chat-friend
Shumonto Roy retreats into the deep well of wordlessness, mourning
the loss of his ex-girlfriend Irene Scott.
Is Shumonto turning into a later-day Prince Hamlet of the virtual
world? Will today's Ophelia speak up, turn into a voracious wordsmith
to counter his oppressive silence? Suddenly the characters who
had met in a nebulous world of the Internet are confronted by
the perils of the real. Which is the fantasy world? Or do they
inhabit a placeless space somewhere in between? Do they live multiple
lives giving births to newer selves every time they give themselves
a new screen name?
In her debut novel, the author lets loose a refraction of university
life, heavily coloured by pigments of imagination. And the refracting
prism of this overground campus life is the netherworld of anonymous
chat-windows and webcam-facilitated screen-dalliances.
About the Author
Angshukanta Chakraborty was born in 1981 in Kolkata but moved
to Delhi at a very early age. She studied English Literature/s
at Hindu College, University of Delhi, a place which offered her
quite a few people to revere in her otherwise irreverently godless
life. Currently doing her PhD in South-Asian diasporic cinema
at the University of East London, Angshukanta also writes poetry.