City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi

This book concerns the year Dalrymple spends in Delhi, attempting to uncover the secrets and hidden past of this once-great city. Dalrymple skillfully weaves the accounts of his daily life with the history of Delhi. One moment, you are reading about a harrowing taxi-cab ride, and the next page, an account of Shah Jehan's life begins. Few writers can change the pace so suddenly and get away with it, but Dalrymple is able to segue into and out of topics effortlessly.

The pacing and tone of the book is great, and he injects enough humor to keep the reader chuckling from time to time. An overall great read.

This book is definitely one you should read if you are at all interested in India.

Whether you plan to visit Delhi, have been blessed to have been there, or just want to read an informative, good traveler's (note: not tourist) tale, then City of Djinns should be on your list of books to read. William Dalrymple paints a picture full of humor and fascinating detail, mixed with love and frustration. Which is what Delhi is: fascinating, frustrating, fun, and full of incredible people. Delhi is multi-layered and not easily explained. Delhi has to be experienced. Yet, Dalrymple brings to life a lot of the feeling of this magnificent city. More importantly for me, he brings to life part of its history, details history books leave out, alley ways that deserve to be explored. As a traveler blessed to return to Delhi fairly often, I have found the details of Dalrymple's book adding value to my visits - by knowing which alley ways might just be explored.

« City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi » William Dalrymple HarperCollins 1993

« City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi » was my travel reading for my first trip to India in the summer of 2007, a trip which began and ended in Delhi. Having read other writers and other Dalrymple books on India before I set out, I read « City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi » first on my outward journey, and then reviewed it again as we made our way back to Delhi on the last stage of our tour. The book was an invaluable resource, supplementing the ill-informed and poorly spoken guides who were difficult to understand and unable to answer questions in any depth. Dalrymple's book helped me to tie the city and its sites and history together into some sort of coherent whole. I also found the pen-and-ink illustrations by Dalrymple's wife Olivia Fraser very illuminating. Although at first sight they struck me as much too calm and uncluttered to convey the true image of the places they posed, I later came to appreciate how they captured the inherent essence of their subject and spoke volumes in their simple way.

As a journalist, Dalrymple has a knack for finding the right people to talk with - people with living memories of the time he writes about, who can bring to life the crumbling ruins they inhabit and instil us with visions of the beauty that once radiated in Delhi. It is certainly difficult to see today but reading the stories did help me to understand the sensibilities of some of the « Delhi-wallahs » we encountered in our travels.

My one criticism of the book is that he reuses material that has appeared elsewhere, which broke the rhythm of my involvement with his story and made me feel uncomfortable. These passages were extensive, and not changed sufficiently to feel new in any way. I was surprised that his editors allowed this to pass, unless there were deadline difficulties.

The overall impression that I was left with is that India today is still suffering from the reverberations of the devastation of partition, which brought incomprehensible tragedy and hardship and touched almost every family in India in one way or another. As we watch India vie for its place in the globalised technological marketplace, we will understand her better if we remember this recent back-story in her development.

A really wonderful book about the city of Delhi. Dalrymple and his wife go to spend a year living in Delhi (how did they afford this?), and he uses this arrangement as a way of chronicling the present day status of the city and delving deep into its history. He's done a very nice job of moving back and forth between present and past, managing to keep all his meetings and interviews with various experts quite interesting. The only part which lost my interest was an extended look into Sufi mysticism, but I just skimmed it and moved along. Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in India, and especially to anyone planning a trip to Delhi.

William Dalrymple has a great writing style and a deep apetite for understanding the historical and cultural context. He neither takes the clinical distant approach to his subjects neither does he use a patronizing attitude to India. If you have been to Delhi, the book will be a great reading; if are planning to go there, it should be required reading. You will enjoy your trip so much more. Even if you don't go to Delhi, it is just a wonderful reading. Olivia has done a great job in her illustrations.

An entertaining and sometimes insightful series of sketches about ex-pat life in Delhi. A good gift for someone traveling that way, fun to read in the city.

I'd also recommend Rohinton Mistry's _A Fine Balance_ if you're going to India--for the perverse reason that it is so overwhelmingly depressing that it nearly adequately prepares first-time visitors for the experience. Incidentally, Mistry's book is also interesting on Indian history, and a beautifully well-written and plotted novel.

Two very different books, but a good pairing for visitors--armchair or otherwise.

As the book unfolds, William Dalrymple discovers the layers of history of Delhi, much like the excavator mentioned toward the end.
As he ventures to find remnants of a culture in Pakistan, and later in Daulatabad, you feel you're on the journey yourself. Having visited Delhi only recently, I wished I had read the book before going there. Without being overly patronizing or eurocentric, he shares his journey with us. Watch for the everyday people that know extraordinary ones- the dancer who knows the unani doctor, the jeweler who knows the eunuch queen well, and the likeable Dr. Jaffrey who is the underrecognized authority on Delhi.
I whole heartedly recommend this book to anyone who's a travel, history or India buff.

A master's student of Asian cultures at the University of Pennsylvania, I first began reading William Dalrymple's books in the winter of 2003, just prior to my first trip to Asia. I found a beat up copy of "The Age of Kali" in my neighborhood's library when I was working a soul-killing desk job. The book was, in many ways, my introduction to India. It would not be an exaggeration to say that this book changed my life.

If you have read this far, then you must, must, must read these books.

I studied in India in 2004 and am now reading "City of Djinn", about Dalrymple's year in Delhi and it is just as intoxicating as "Age of Kali."

I wrote Mr. Dalrymple the following email just last night:

Hello William!

I'm finishing up my master's thesis and procrastinating the final touches (again) and I went surfing the web and came upon your site.

I'm the middle of "City of Djinn" and I just wanted to THANK YOU for both this book AND "The Age of Kali", which I read shortly before my first trip to Asia in 2003. I won't go into detail as I can't procrastinate for quite that long, but the book changed my life and it made me fall in love with India.

I finally spent time in India - the summer of 2004 and found that A of K was instrumental in my quest to decode some small part of the India around me.

So, there you have it. Not as effusive and jubilant as it might be (it's 1:30 am here on the East Coast of the USA) but sincere and long overdue, nonetheless.

Good night from the USA,

Elizabeth Garrott

PS: Thank you, also, for the portrait of Balvinder Singh, the Puris, William Fraser, and lady who died at the "hands" of a milk-fed cobra - all from "City of Djinn"

This book re-awakened by desire to return to India, and experience once again the madness, and beauty that is India. He made me realise that I had viewed Delhi superficially in the past, only scratching the surface, and never plunging into the dark depths of what lay beneath the rapidly growing megalopolis. I would recommend the book to anybody visiting India or its capital.

However, the author himself only superficially touched on Delhi as well. The title itself indicates he was focussing on Mughal Delhi, and was not particularly interested in much more. It shows in that it is suprising that a book could be written about a city which has had a Hindu prescence for millenia and barely touch on them. It would be as in one wrote a history of Montreal, and concentrated on the Anglophones, never touching on the fact that the city was founded by the French, and was at best a small anglo enclave in a French sea. The Hindu roots of the city, rooted as they are in the epic war of the Mahabharata, are relegated to a passing comment of a rumble between a couple of tribes of cave men. His comments about the lack of Hindu monuments in the city are astounding naive, given that many of the great Muslim, and even Moghul monuments were constructed from the debris of temples destroyed by the intolerant conquerors of Delhi in the middle ages. His treatment of Punjabis, which alternated between shrewd business people to village bumpkins fed into stereotypes, except when he touched on the horrific massacres following the death of Indira Ghandi.

Kudos to Dalrymple for a great work, but too bad for his overly narrow vision. While the great Moghul and Islamic architecture astounds, the spirit of Delhi has alway been Hindu, in that it seemingly continously undergoes the cycle of death and rebirth. The author never understood that.

Came across Darymple's writings in a short extract within a travel book called Love Delhi. His prose was instantly accessible and attractive so as we were due in Delhi I decided to buy the book. Which my wife promptly absconded with...

Anyway, I did eventually get to read it after we returned from India and it is a terrific history of Delhi and helps the visitor understand India a whole lot more. Dalrymple makes history generally, and this topic specifically, very approachable. BTW, my wife gave it the thumbs up as well.

A truly marvelous book for anyone who loves India, whether they have been there in the flesh or in spirit. Dalrymple is simply one of the best writers around when it comes to creating a tapestry that has inner and outer journey so beautifully interwoven.

Dalrymple knows tons about the history of Delhi. The book is poignant but not a comedy as advertised. He weaves past and present by ambitiously visiting historic sites to wean the truth out of them while detailing present family life with an Indian landlady. There are also some sweet water color illustrations.

This book provides an insight into the history of Delhi as well as sharing the experience of absorbing all of the anomalies of living there. It is the first book I have read by this author on Delhi and would certainly feel encouraged to read other books by him.

Another masterful work by William Dalrymple. This mesmerizing tale expertly weaves ancient history, myth and legend with contemporary Delhi... contemporary as of 1993, but plenty close enough. The breadth and beauty of Dalrymple's work is fabulous. Any reader interested in Delhi new or old will benefit from this enlightening and superbly written book.