The Epic City, a debut portrait of Calcutta by Kushanava Choudhury (Bloomsbury) that I mentioned recently, has been doubly endorsed by the writer and historian William Dalrymple. Having written a blurb for the book (“Beautifully observed and even more beautifully written… marks the arrival of a major new talent”), Dalrymple reviewed it yesterday in The Observer.

The Epic City is also assessed in The Literary Review, by Oliver Balch — though you’ll have to subscribe to read his thoughts. The lead review of that magazine, free online (and written by Peter Moore), is of Joseph Farrell’s Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa (MacLehose Press), the island where a footloose teller of tales at last came to rest.