Capital: A Portrait of Twenty-First Century Delhi

by RanaDasgupta (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2014

  $6.07

  'A terrific portrait of Delhi right now' SALMAN RUSHDIE 'An astonishing tour de force by a major writer at the peak of his powers' WILLIAM DALRYMPLE WINNER OF THE PRIX EMILE GUIMET DE LITTERATURE ASIATIQUE 2017 WINNER OF THE RYSZARD KAPUSCINSKI AWARD 2017 SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2015 SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE ONDAATJE PRIZE 2015 SHORTLISTED FOR THE PRIX DU MEILLEUR LIVRE ETRANGER 2016 At the turn of the twenty-first century, acclaimed novelist Rana Dasgupta arrived in Delhi with a single suitcase. He had no intention of staying for long. But the city beguiled him - he 'fell in love and in hate with it' - and fourteen years later, Delhi is still his home. Fourteen years of break-neck change. The boom following the opening up of India's economy plunged Delhi into a tumult of destruction and creation: slums and markets were ripped down, and shopping malls and apartment blocks erupted from the ruins. But the transformation was stern, abrupt and fantastically unequal, and it gave rise to strange and bewildering feelings. The city brimmed with ambition and rage. Bizarre crimes stole the headlines. In Capital, we see Delhi through the eyes of its people. With the lyricism and empathy of a novelist, Dasgupta takes us through a series of encounters - with billionaires and bureaucrats, drug dealers and metal traders, slum dwellers and psychoanalysts - which plunge us into Delhi's intoxicating, and sometimes terrifying, story of capitalist transformation. Interweaving over a century of history with his personal journey, he presents us with the first literary portrait of one of the twenty-first century's fastest-growing megalopolises - a dark and uncanny portrait that gives us insights, too, as to the nature of our own - everyone's - shared, global future.