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Capital Rana Dasgupta

Capital By Rana Dasgupta

Capital by Rana Dasgupta


$10.39
Condition - Very Good
Only 4 left

Summary

The transformation of Delhi into a twenty-first century metropolis is an intoxicating, at times terrifying story - and it has repercussions not only for India, but for everybody's future.

Capital Summary

Capital: A Portrait of Twenty-First Century Delhi by Rana Dasgupta

'A terrific portrait of Delhi right now' SALMAN RUSHDIE 'An astonishing tour de force by a major writer at the peak of his powers' WILLIAM DALRYMPLE WINNER OF THE PRIX EMILE GUIMET DE LITTERATURE 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 ETRANGER 2016 At the turn of the twenty-first century, acclaimed novelist Rana Dasgupta arrived in Delhi with a single suitcase. He had no intention of staying for long. But the city beguiled him - he 'fell in love and in hate with it' - and fourteen years later, Delhi is still his home. Fourteen years of break-neck change. The boom following the opening up of India's economy plunged Delhi into a tumult of destruction and creation: slums and markets were ripped down, and shopping malls and apartment blocks erupted from the ruins. But the transformation was stern, abrupt and fantastically unequal, and it gave rise to strange and bewildering feelings. The city brimmed with ambition and rage. Bizarre crimes stole the headlines. In Capital, we see Delhi through the eyes of its people. With the lyricism and empathy of a novelist, Dasgupta takes us through a series of encounters - with billionaires and bureaucrats, drug dealers and metal traders, slum dwellers and psychoanalysts - which plunge us into Delhi's intoxicating, and sometimes terrifying, story of capitalist transformation. Interweaving over a century of history with his personal journey, he presents us with the first literary portrait of one of the twenty-first century's fastest-growing megalopolises - a dark and uncanny portrait that gives us insights, too, as to the nature of our own - everyone's - shared, global future.

Capital Reviews

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 * *
Important . . . His lyrical encounters with a wide range of modern Delhiites reveal a novelist's ear and are beautifully sketched * * Telegraph * *
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 * *
Capital is constructed around a series of mesmerising interviews . . . Among many lively episodes in Dasgupta's appropriately large, sprawling and populous book is one describing the experience of driving in Delhi * * Spectator * *
Rana Dasgupta is the most unexpected and original Indian writer of his generation -- SALMAN RUSHDIE
[Dasgupta has] a gift for sentences of lancing power and beauty * * New Yorker * *
Dasgupta's eye is keen, and his sensitivity to small moments takes this extraordinary, tender book linger in the mind like a series of striking short stories. In Delhi, ruined, embattled, and alarmingly mutant, he sees the globalised city of the future * * Prospect * *

About Rana Dasgupta

Rana Dasgupta won the 2010 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book for his debut novel Solo. He is also the author of a collection of urban folktales, Tokyo Cancelled, which was shortlisted for the 2005 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Capital is his first work of non-fiction. Born in Canterbury in 1971, he now lives in Delhi.

Additional information

GOR005709953
9780857860026
085786002X
Capital: A Portrait of Twenty-First Century Delhi by Rana Dasgupta
Used - Very Good
Hardback
Canongate Books
20140306
512
Winner of Ryszard Kapuscinski Award for Literary Reportage 2017 (UK) Short-listed for Ondaatje Prize 2015 (UK) Short-listed for The Orwell Prize for Books 2015 (UK) Long-listed for The Orwell Prize for Books 2015 (UK)
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - Capital