Awards

• Short-listed for RSL Ondaatje Prize 2015 (UK)
• Short-listed for The Orwell Prize for Books 2015 (UK)
• Winner of Prix Émile Guimet de Littérature Asiatique 2017 (France)
• Winner of Ryszard Kapuscinski Award for Literary Reportage 2017 (Poland)

Overview

WINNER OF THE WINDHAM CAMPBELL PRIZE 2025 WINNER OF THE PRIX ÉMILE GUIMET DE LITTÉRATURE 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 ÉTRANGER 2016 In Capital, Rana Dasgupta reveals the new version of Delhi which erupted out of its economic boom in the 1990s. An unsparing look at the causes and consequences of globalisation, Capital is at once a history, a warning and a looking glass. Slums and markets bulldozed or burnt down. Luxury shopping malls and apartment blocks erected in their place. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people from the rural hinterland streamed in, looking for work. The transformation of the city was stern, abrupt and unequal. Delhi brimmed with ambition and rage. In this prescient account of the mayhem and disparity that would emerge from India's globalisation, Rana Dasgupta shows us a city's rebirth, for better and worse, through the eyes of its people. Capital is a book for our times.

Full Product Details

9781837263592

Table of Contents

Reviews

Important . . . His lyrical encounters with a wide range of modern Delhiites reveal a novelist's ear and are beautifully sketched * * Telegraph * * 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 * * 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 * *

Important . . . His lyrical encounters with a wide range of modern Delhiites reveal a novelist's ear and are beautifully sketched * * Telegraph * * A terrific portrait of Delhi right now and hits a lot of nails on the head -- SALMAN RUSHDIE Lyrical and haunting * * International New York Times * * Achingly beautiful . . . and cleverly tangential * * Financial Times * * Intense, lyrical, erudite and powerful * * Observer * * 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 * *

Author Information

Rana Dasgupta is the author of the short story collection, Tokyo Cancelled, which was shortlisted for the 2005 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the novel Solo, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2010 for Best Book, and After Nations. Capital, his first work of non-fiction, was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2015 and the Ondaatje Prize in 2015. He was awarded the Windham Campbell Prize in 2025.

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