Delhi has been compared to the phoenix that rises from the ashes of its previous self. Paradoxes and contrasts abound in this old-young city. City Improbable brings together travellers’ tales—from the medieval narratives of Ibn Battuta and Niccolao Manucci to contemporary ones of Jan Morris, eyewitness accounts of crucial events in the city’s turbulent history and vignettes of the different stages in the building of the city. But more than the physical boundaries, this anthology illustrates the states of mind of people who lived here and live here today. Edited and with an introduction by Khushwant Singh, City Improbable brings together the best written about Delhi over the millennium, a collection as diverse, lively, sometimes serious, sometimes richly humorous as the city itself.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Khushwant Singh
Khushwant Singh was born in 1915 in Hadali, Punjab. After university education in Lahore and London, he practiced at the Lahore High court before joining the Indian Ministry of External Affairs. He began a distinguished career as a journalist with all India Radio in 1951. Since then he has been founder-editor of Yojana, editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India and the Hindustan Times and chief editor of New Delhi. Today he is India’s best known columnist. Khushwant Singh has also had an extremely successful career as a writer. His published works include the classic two-volume A History of the Sikhs, the novels Train to Pakistan, Delhi and The Company of Women, his autobiography, Truth, Love and a Little Malice, and a number of translated works and non-fiction books on Delhi, nature, Sikh history and religion, and current affairs. Khushwant Singh was Member of Parliament from 1980 to 1986. Among other honours he was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1974 by the President of India (he returned the decoration in 1984 in protest against the Union Government’s siege of the Golden Temple, Amritsar).
There are no reviews yet.