Paris, Deconstructed: Amit Chaudhuri’s Château Rouge

Amit Chaudhuri joins Adam Biles to discuss his new novel Chateau Rouge, set not in the postcard Paris of Hemingway and Midnight in Paris, but in the neighbourhood around Gare du Nord — a Paris that resists being known, curated, or confirmed.

Chaudhuri talks about writing against the "already known" city, drawing on Roland Barthes and the idea of "heritage modernity" to explain why he wanted to deconstruct Paris's status as a museum-piece rather than a lived-in place. He discusses his narrator's disorientation on arrival, the subtle presence of race and visibility in the book, and how global events — the Gilets Jaunes, the Notre Dame fire — pass through the novel as lived, unfinished moments rather than history. The conversation turns, too, to marriage: how a decades-old, unread copy of A Moveable Feast, gifted by his wife, becomes a quiet emotional throughline.

But Château Rouge:

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Amit Chaudhuri is the author of nine novels, whose ‘languorous, elliptical, beautiful prose is impressively impossible to put in any category at all’ (Salman Rushdie). He is also an essayist, poet, short story writer, singer and composer.

Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.

Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w

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