“But where Delhi was unique was that, scattered all around the city, there were human ruins too. Throughout all this, he ties together the past and the present, especially when talking to people with connections to these chapters of Delhi’s past. Walking through the streets of this old city, Dalrymple visits ruins hidden in narrow lanes and wades through musty old libraries to piece together its past. Eid-Ul-Fitr(Eid) prayer at Jama Masjid Mosque in Delhi, a building built by the Mughals Successive civilisations have made Delhi their capital, and in City of Djinns, we get to go back in time and experience everything from the (then recent) Sikh Riots the aftermath of the Partition of India the British Raj the Mutiny of 1857 opulent Mughal Delhi the city of the Sultanate and finally, its connections to the famed city of Indraprastha from the Indian epic “The Mahabharata”.
The Many Cities of Delhi in the City of Djinnsĭalrymple’s Delhi is a sprawling and layered city, and he peels these back to explore selected periods of its history. They include a thrifty Sikh landlady and her eccentric husband a jovial taxi driver various government officials eunuchs whirling dervishes and living relics of the British Raj. In his quest for the city’s (in)famous djinns (fire-formed spirits), Dalrymple and his wife, the book’s illustrator Olivia Fraser, meet a series of interesting characters. The book follows Dalrymple’s now familiar style of tying together contemporary events and anecdotes with historical tales and fantastical legends.
But where does it stand today?Īlso Read: Travel Reviews – The Great Railway Bazaar ― William Dalrymple, City of Djinns: A Year in Delhiĭalrymple’s second book after the acclaimed In Xanadu (1989), it went on to win the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award (1994) and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award (1994). “Whoever has built a new city in Delhi has always lost it: the Pandava brethren, Prithviraj Chauhan, Feroz Shah Tughluk, Shah Jehan … They all built new cities and they all lost them. Part memoir and part travelogue, it paints an engaging and informative portrait of this age-old city. Released in 1993, it was the result of a year-long stay in New Delhi, and explores the centuries of history present in the city. City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi is a fascinating book by British author William Dalrymple.
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