City Of Djinns: A Year In Delhi

Winner of the 1994 Thomas Cook Travel book Award and Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year

‘Dalrymple is probably the best travel writer of his generation’—Daily Mail

‘As the author of the best travel book of recent years at the intensely irritating age of twenty-two, William Dalrymple has now shown that In Xanadu was no fluke. City of Djinns is an entertaining mix of history and diary informed by a deep curiousity about the ways in which the ghosts of even the most distant past still walk in the twentieth century.’—Christopher Lockwood, Daily Telegraph

‘Dalrymple has pulled it off again … At a time when the book of travels is beginning to lose its fashionable allure, City of Djinns is not really a travel book at all. It is a kind of memoir recording the response of a single, gentle, merry and learned mind to the presence of an ancient city ... Dalrymple is anything but avoyeur. Even his excursions into the world o the eunuchs are conducted with a kind of grave innocence. He is more a pilgrim than an observer, always trying to understand … It is the work of a man who has consciously chosen to commit himself to the profession of letters, and in it we see the first fine rapture of In Xanadu deepening to a profounder dedication … hours and hours of pleasure for his readers.’—Jan Morris, Independent

‘One one level there are the amusing rites of passage, the struggles with bureaucracy, the eccentricity of Dalrymple’s landlord, all entertainingly related. Dalrymple has a way of letting you smell and feel the city. There are beautifully chiselled descriptions of a grand capital … but much of the book’s strength lies in Dalrymple’s skill in peeling the historical onion and showing how (the) New Delhi resonates with the old … A splendid tapestry.’—Trevor Fishlock, Sunday Telegraph

‘A sympathetic and engaging portrait of this age-old city’—Nicholas Wordsworth, Financial Times

‘Scholalry and marvellously entertaining … A considerable feat.’—Dervia Murphy, Spectator

‘Unlike much of modern travel writing [City of Djinns] is informative, learned and funny … a lively and sometimes profound book.’—Emma duncan, Economist

‘An expansive and inclusive work, richly peopled … an enlightening and entertaining book.’—Iain Wetherby, Literary Review