#Review: The Dead Fish by Rajkamal Choudhary
The Dead Fish (Machhali Mari Hui)
Author: Rajkamal Choudhary
Publisher: Rupa Publications
Rating: 3/5
Some books are meant to comfort; others are meant to disturb—and The Dead Fish firmly belongs to the latter. Rajkamal Choudhary’s Machhali Mari Hui, now translated into English for the first time, is an anatomy of desire, dislocation, and identity set against the backdrop of mid-20th-century Kolkata. To call it “bold” for its time would be an understatement—it fearlessly foregrounds homosexuality, fragmented sexuality, and the psychological turbulence of its protagonist, Nirmal Padmavat.
The novel’s merit lies in its audacity. Choudhary refuses to cloak Nirmal’s contradictions or soften his emotional volatility. His entanglements with Shirin, Priya, and Kalyani mirror a deeply fractured self, torn between devotion and destruction, longing and alienation. The metaphor of the dead fish—evoking barrenness, unfulfilled desires, and emotional enmeshment—runs like an undercurrent through the narrative, giving the novel both its title and its sting.
But with this unflinching honesty comes a certain heaviness. The prose, though lyrical and embroidered with metaphor, sometimes overwhelms with its density. Nirmal’s psyche, compared to Goethe’s Mephisto, Shakespeare’s Othello, and Brontë’s Heathcliff, can feel at times overdrawn, almost suffocating in its darkness. The experimental writing style is both a strength and a stumbling block—it elevates the book into art but also risks alienating readers who look for coherence amidst chaos.
And yet, that is precisely what makes the novel relevant even today. In an era where discussions around homosexuality and identity still struggle against societal norms, The Dead Fish remains unsettlingly urgent. It doesn’t hand out answers, nor does it offer comfort. Instead, it holds up a mirror to fractured selves and asks us to sit with discomfort.
For me, this wasn’t an easy read, but it was a necessary one. Choudhary doesn’t just tell a story—he critiques, he provokes, he unsettles. And maybe that’s the true merit of The Dead Fish: it doesn’t let you walk away unchanged.
Find the book here.
