Sean Bala reviewed City of Djinns by William Dalrymple
Review of 'City of Djinns' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
“City of Djinns” by William Dalrymple was one of my first introduction to Delhi. It gives you a portrait of a city with layers upon layers of history with hidden pockets of a past much more interesting than its present. Sadly, the city of Delhi that Dalrymple experience in the early 1990s no longer exists except in pockets. The city has grown exponentially and become much more polluted. It sprawls and does not feel like it has a center. But the book is useful as a portrait of a Westerner who came to India and discovered a hidden world of a culture and society that has disappeared amid the violent cataclysms of the 19th and 20th centuries. What makes this book (Dalrymple’s second) so interesting is that one can see the seeds of most of the subsequent works in the stories he recounts.
The main criticism I have of the …
“City of Djinns” by William Dalrymple was one of my first introduction to Delhi. It gives you a portrait of a city with layers upon layers of history with hidden pockets of a past much more interesting than its present. Sadly, the city of Delhi that Dalrymple experience in the early 1990s no longer exists except in pockets. The city has grown exponentially and become much more polluted. It sprawls and does not feel like it has a center. But the book is useful as a portrait of a Westerner who came to India and discovered a hidden world of a culture and society that has disappeared amid the violent cataclysms of the 19th and 20th centuries. What makes this book (Dalrymple’s second) so interesting is that one can see the seeds of most of the subsequent works in the stories he recounts.
The main criticism I have of the book is that I feel Dalrymple seems to not only admire the glittering past of pre-partition Delhi, but he also portrays contemporary Delhi in a less-than-flattering light: a city dislocated and lost to itself. While I think that, for the most part, his analysis is good, one can accuse him of nostalgia for a past (that may or may not exist). As I have lived in India longer and longer, I find that this nostalgic viewpoint of India is pretty but counterproductive. The book excavates the multiple layers of history, culture, and society that makes up Delhi and shows how they jostle and fight amongst themselves. I recommend reading the book once if you’d like but know that the Delhi he portrays does not really exist anymore. It is a good travel book but not, in my opinion, a great one.
