City of Djinns
Thursday, January 28th, 2010 at
7:25 am
Product Description
As Dalrymple’s first book, “In Xanadu”, traversed thousands of miles, now he traverses thousands of years. In the course of 12 months in Delhi, he peels back the successive encrusting layers of history, using both material and human remains of each of the eight cities of Delhi, interlacing innumerable stories with the present and ending with the Delhi creation myth contained in the great Indian epic “The Mahabharata”.
City of Djinns
Filed under: Book
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I didn’t finish this book. I usually love this kind of book. I got tired of all the Indian Jargon. Yes, it has a glossary, but many of the words weren’t even there. There were references to things never explained. It was like I came in on a movie in the middle. The narrative was just not enough to keep going.
Rating: 1 / 5
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.
Rating: 4 / 5
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.
Rating: 5 / 5
this book is great.I really like the way W.D. describes his living in Delhi, he is funny and he never patronizes.
I found strange how he always finds this amazing people there just to help him.
he is very educated but sometimes I think he shows off all his knowledge..
anyway my next trip to india will be to delhi
Rating: 3 / 5
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.
Rating: 5 / 5