Review
‘Delightful… Surely one of the funniest books about India’
Times Literary Supplement
‘Scholarly and marvellously entertaining… a considerable feat’
Dervla Murphy, Spectator
‘Dalrymple has pulled it off again’
Jan Morris, Independent
Product Description
A scintillating memoir of a year spent in Delhi by one of the best young writers at work today.
Alive with the mayhem of the present and sparkling with William Dalrymple’s irrepressible wit, City of Djinns is a fascinating portrait of a city.
Watched over and protected by the mischievous, invisible djinns, Delhi has, through their good offices, been saved from destruction many times over the centuries. With an extraordinary array of characters, from elusive eunuchs to the last remnants of the Raj, Dalrymple’s second book is a unique and dazzling feat of research. Over the course of a year he comes to know the bewildering city intimately, and brilliantly conveys its magical nature, peeling back successive layers of history, and interlacing innumerable stories from Delhi’s past and present.
From the Back Cover
Alive with the mayhem of the present and sparkling with William Dalrymple’s irrepressible wit, 'City of Djinns' is a fascinating portrait of a city.
Watched over and protected by the mischievous, invisible djinns, Delhi has, through their good offices, been saved from destruction many times over the centuries. With an extraordinary array of characters, from elusive eunuchs to the last remnants of the Raj, Dalrymple’s second book is a unique and dazzling feat of research. Over the course of a year he comes to know the bewildering city intimately, and brilliantly conveys its magical nature, peeling back successive layers of history, and interlacing innumerable stories from Delhi’s past and present.
About the Author
William Dalrymple’s first book, In Xanadu, won the Yorkshire Post Best First Work Award and the Scottish Arts Council Spring Book Award. His third, From the Holy Mountain, won the Scottish Arts Council Autumn Book Award and was shortlisted for the 1998 Thomas Cook Award. His fourth, The Age of Kali, was published in November 1998. He is the youngest Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has recently written and presented a six-part series on the buildings of the Raj for Channel 4.
