Capital
A Portrait of Twenty-First Century Delhi
Published on 6. March 2014
Book
Hardback
512 pages
978-0-85786-002-6 (ISBN)
Description
'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.
'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.
Reviews / Votes
A beautifully written portrait of a corrupt, violent and traumatised city growing so fast it is almost unrecognisable to its own inhabitants. An astonishing tour de force by a major writer at the peak of his powers -- WILLIAM DALRYMPLE A terrific portrait of Delhi right now and hits a lot of nails on the head -- SALMAN RUSHDIE * * Vogue * * Lyrical and haunting * * International New York Times * * Achingly beautiful . . . and cleverly tangential * * Financial Times * * Intense, lyrical, erudite and powerful * * Observer * * Important . . . His lyrical encounters with a wide range of modern Delhiites reveal a novelist's ear and are beautifully sketched * * Telegraph * * Dasgupta peels back the layers of denial with insight, humanity and beautiful writing. He exposes festering wounds buts succeeds in fascinating rather than repelling * * The Times * * A remarkable and exhaustive account * * Independent * * Personal, original and vivid * * New Internationalist * * A remarkably elegant work whose rich style and sweep often brings to mind V S Naipaul's A Million Mutinies Now * * New Statesman * * Dasgupta's combination of reportage, political critique and oral history is mordant rather than dyspeptic, sorrowful rather than castigatory. But what makes it more than a local study, what makes it so haunting, is that its textured, tart accounts of the privatisation of public space, of the incestuous relationship between the political and business classes, of the precarity that renders daily life so fraught all apply as much to Britain and the west as they do to the Indian capital * * Guardian * * Capital is constructed around a series of mesmerising interviews . . . Among many lively episodes in Dasgupta's appropriately large, sprawling and populous book is one describing the experience of driving in Delhi * * Spectator * * Rana Dasgupta is the most unexpected and original Indian writer of his generation -- SALMAN RUSHDIE [Dasgupta has] a gift for sentences of lancing power and beauty * * New Yorker * * Dasgupta's eye is keen, and his sensitivity to small moments takes this extraordinary, tender book linger in the mind like a series of striking short stories. In Delhi, ruined, embattled, and alarmingly mutant, he sees the globalised city of the future * * Prospect * *More details
Edition
Main
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
With dust jacket
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 162 mm
Thickness: 41 mm
Weight
754 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-85786-002-6 (9780857860026)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
03/2014
Canongate Books
€15.19
Available for download
Person
Rana Dasgupta won the 2010 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book for his debut novel Solo. He is also the author of a collection of urban folktales, Tokyo Cancelled, which was shortlisted for the 2005 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Capital is his first work of non-fiction. Born in Canterbury in 1971, he now lives in Delhi.