Set in the underbelly of Calcutta, a story that reimagines a city’s relationship with its abandoned animals, interlacing dark humor and political critique into a fable of resistance. A city on edge and a reckoning long overdue—Dogstar is a searing fable of vengeance and the limits of human empathy. Nabarun Bhattacharya’s novella unfolds in Calcutta, where the city’s dogs, brutalized and unseen, rise in defiant revolt against their human oppressors. As the streets turn into battlegrounds, history itself bleeds through—echoes of past atrocities and ancient mythologies intertwining with the raw immediacy of the present. With his signature blend of dark humor and sharp political critique, Bhattacharya crafts a hypnotic tale that forces us to confront a chilling question: Who, in the end, is truly human? Blurring the boundaries between the real and the mythic, Dogstar is a dystopian allegory as disorienting as it is revelatory. For readers drawn to Orwellian fables and narratives that unsettle and illuminate in equal measure, this is a read that will haunt and provoke long after the final page.
