Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Semeen Khan from Pakistan , 22 Aug 2006
It seldom happens to me that I select one particular author and then want to read every book written by him; William Dalrymple is one such author. To me his works In Xanadu, From the Holy Mountain, City of Djinns a year in Delhi are not just historical adventures they are kleidoscopes of worlds within worlds.
Delhi is a city that i love and i love it for all the reasons given in City of Djinns. This book is a complete picture of a city ravaged and re built, destroyed and recreated but What makes Dalrymple's Delhi different is that it takes a human shape, a face you recognise.
All events past and present in City of Djjins are within the grasp of the reader. Dalrymple writes about the Persian Massacre, Indian Mutiny of 1857 and the bloody Partition of 1947 but never taking you too far from the present day rickshaw noises or the eunuchs inhabiting the mysterious inner streets of old Delhi so one is not weighed down by history rather mediating between the two worlds.
Dalrymple is profound, sensitive but above all witty. On the ever changing modern day Delhi I quote the author, "Delhi was starting to unbutton. After the long victorian twilight the sari was beginning to slip".
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Magical Read, 14 Jun 2006
I am eternally grateful to Mr. Dalrymple for writing 'City Of Djinns' because it led me to view the city where I was born and where I now live in an entirely new light. I confess that despite spending ten of my sixteen years in Delhi I never went out of my way to find out its historical significance and my interaction with its monuments never progressed beyond a few cursory visits, acting as a (remarkably unqualified) guide to several NRI friends who were just as uncurious and complacent as I was.
It was only after reading this book for the first time about six months ago that I realized what I was missing out on, and since then I have made an attempt to set out and rediscover the city and its forgotten jewels. It amazes me how the author can see so much poetry in what appears to be a crumbling mass of ruins to the lay observer. Sometimes his description of the architectural features of a church or mosque or temple or tomb is a bit too erudite for me to fully comprehend, and then I have to look up the terms that he uses and agonize over photographs of that particular edifice, trying to see what all the fuss is about, but I think that's what really makes the book so delightful-there is a different and beautiful-sounding word for everything that is described.
The book, I thought, is very delicately structured, which is in keeping with the subject-Delhi, for all its bustle, lacks the cheery boldness of say, Mumbai, another great Indian city. There is a certain fragility about Delhi, which becomes more obvious as you venture into the Walled City, and it is exactly this elusive quality that Mr. Dalrymple has captured so beautifully in his book.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Delhi days, 22 Oct 2006
William Dalrymple is probably the best travel writer of his generation, both in his ability to evoke a sense of time and place, and his skill for shedding light on history in an engaging and accessible way. In contrast to his first book, the brilliant 'In Xanadu', Dalrymple focuses less on
his own experiences and more on unpeeling the multiple and intriguing layers of Delhi's history. This is not to say he is an invisible presence in the book, but that his personal account acts more as an access point for historical discovery than a narrative in itself - Paul Theroux this is not. 'A Year in Delhi' finds Dalrymple digging deeper and deeper into Delhi's history throughout his trip, unravelling the various epochs of the city, from the British Raj to the roots of The Mahabharata. At once amusing and erudite, Dalrymple also has a gift for sketching the surreal characters he meets along the way, from Sufi mystics and taxi drivers to his eccentric landlady. This must be the definitive travel companion for a trip to this fascinating and ancient city.
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