William Dalrymple was awarded "The Sunday Times" Young Writer of the Year Award in 1994. This book was awarded the 1994 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award.
William Dalrymple is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Asiatic Society, and in 2002 was awarded the Mungo Park Medal by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society for his ‘outstanding contribution to travel literature’. He wrote and presented the TV series ‘Stones of the Raj’ and ‘Indian Journeys’, which won BAFTA’s 2002 Grierson Award for Best Documentary Series. He and his wife, artist Olivia Fraser, have three children, and divide their time between London and Delhi.
Delhi is a city alive with legends and history for British journalist Dalrymple. In this engaging, colorful record of one year spent in India's capital (which won him the 1994 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award), past and present intersect as he tours bazaars, crumbling palaces and imperial buildings designed by English colonialist architect Sir Edwin Lutyens; attends a Sikh mourning ceremony following a cremation; and meets mystics, nouveaux-riches Punjabis, poets and eunuchs descended from servants of sultans. Stories of djinns-mischievous spirits who presumably watched over Delhi through successive invasions-intertwine with the intrigues of Mughal emperors, the adventures of 14th-century Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta, who was appointed a judge and ambassador in Delhi and snippets of the ancient Sanskrit epic Mahabharata. Dalrymple has a keen eye for the ethnic and religious tensions of a city where high-rises, shopping plazas and satellite dishes are crowding out bungalows and temples. Illustrated. (Dec.)
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