Mukherjee also touches upon issues of illegal immigrants, corporal punishment and aggressive mother and child bonds -- and brings Ritwik in contact with a senile old Englishwoman, Anne Cameron, who journeys to India to delve into the shared colonial legacy of India and Britain.

'I poured my heart into creating Anne Cameron. She has suffered so much and the character Ritwik has a lot of me in him. I love imagining other people's lives and stepping into their minds. I wanted a lot of outsiders and loners in my book -- who are alienated,' said Mukherjee, who also lost his parents like his protagonist.

Mukherjee started writing the book in 2001 after a course in creative writing at the University of East Anglia.

'But it took a long time for the book to be published. In 2003-2004, Shruti Devi of Picador India picked up the book and it was finally released in January 2008. The book, however, sold quite late last year,' Mukherjee said.

His British publishers Constable & Robinson will bring out the book in early 2010 under a new title 'A Life Apart'.

Although the protagonist of his novel is a Bengali from Kolkata, Mukherjee himself is an unlikely Bengali.

'I don't feel like going back to Kolkata -- it's too crowded. The only thing I miss are Satyajit Ray's books ('Feluda' and 'Professor Shanku' series). He was probably one of the greatest writers of our childhood,' says Mukherjee.

He insists that his only connect with Bengal 'is the proficiency in Bengali language and its cuisine' but his next novel is also set in Kolkata.

'I can cook almost all kinds of Bengali food. I think Bengali food is international,' says the writer, whose hobbies are cooking and reading.

Mukherjee's favourite authors are 'lesser known, like American writers James Salter, Richard Yates and William Maxwell; Mohammed Hanif of Pakistan and the Norwegian writer Per Petterson'.

(Madhusree Chatterjee can be contacted at madhu.c@ians.in)