17 February 2015

My Delhi book is out

Delhi Pages from a Forgotten History cover
My new book, Delhi: Pages from a Forgotten History, is out from Hay House India:
The megacity that is today’s Delhi is built upon thick layers of history. For a millennium, Delhi has been at the crossroads of trade, culture, and politics. The stories of its buildings and great historical personalities have been told many times, but this book approaches the past of India’s capital through its literary culture. By focusing on writers and thinkers, we meet a colourful cast of characters only glancingly mentioned in political histories.

Many Delhiites are surprised to learn that the language of their city’s cultural heyday was Persian. Despite first being brought to India by invaders, it eventually became an authentically Indian language used in both administration and literature. Although it was cultivated by an elite, it was also a widely available language of aspiration and opportunity, like English today. It connected India to the wider world, and the Indian Subcontinent, particularly Delhi, was once a place where talented poets and scholars from the whole Persian cultural world – from Turkey to eastern China – came to make their fortunes. Its traces remain everywhere but Persian is effectively a dead language in India today.
Scroll.in ran an excerpt from chapter two on same-sex love in Persian literature.

Purchase information:

The publisher's page for the book is here. It is for sale on Amazon.in and Flipkart.com, and in some bookshops. It is not unfortunately yet available outside of India. You can now get it shipped outside of India at Abebooks.com or Abebooks.co.uk, or from DK Agencies.