William Dalrymple, who wrote so magically about India in ‘City of Djinns’, returns to the country in a series of remarkable essays.Featured in its pages are 15-year-old guerrilla girls and dowager Maharanis; flashy Bombay drinks parties and violent village blood feuds; a group of vegetarian terrorists intent on destroying India’s first Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet; and a palace where port and cigars are still carried to guests on a miniature silver steam train.Dalrymple me...

‘Could you show me a djinn?’ I asked. ‘Certainly,’ replied the Sufi. ‘But you would run away.’From the author of the Samuel Johnson Prize-shortlisted ‘The Return of a King’, this is William Dalrymple’s captivating memoir of a year spent in Delhi, a city watched over and protected by the mischievous invisible djinns. Lodging with the beady-eyed Mrs Puri and encountering an extraordinary array of characters – from elusive eunuchs to the last remnants of the Raj – William Dalrymple co...

The Best Travel Writing 2010 is the seventh volume in the annual Travelers' Tales series launched in 2004 to celebrate the world's best travel writing - from Nobel Prize winners to emerging new writers. The points of view and perspectives are global, and themes encompass high adventure, spiritual growth, romance, hilarity and misadventure, service to humanity, and encounters with exotic cuisine. In The Best Travel Writing 2010 readers will explore the mysteries of superst...

One of the most successful, influential and acclaimed travel books of recent years from the author of ‘Return of a King’, which has been shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize.At the age of twenty-two, William Dalrymple left his college in Cambridge to travel to the ruins of Kublai Khan’s stately pleasure dome in Xanadu. This is an account of a quest which took him and his companions across the width of Asia, along dusty, forgotten roads, through villages and cities full of unexp...

In this evocative study of the fall of the Mughal Empire and the beginning of the Raj, award-winning historian William Dalrymple uses previously undiscovered sources to investigate a pivotal moment in history.The last Mughal emperor, Zafar, came to the throne when the political power of the Mughals was already in steep decline. Nonetheless, Zafar—a mystic, poet, and calligrapher of great accomplishment—created a court of unparalleled brilliance, and gave rise to perhaps the greates...

Bruce Wannell was the greatest Orientalist traveller of his generation: a Paddy Leigh Fermor of the East, a Kim for our time. He lived through the Iranian Revolution, worked for a decade in the North West Frontier during the wars in Afghanistan, could transcribe the most complex Arabic calligraphy by sight and spoke Iranian and Afghan Persian with a dazzling, poetic fluency. His curious combination of talents – linguist, musician, translator and teacher – were duplicated by an internationa...

William Dalrymple’s award-winning first book: his classic, fiercely intelligent and wonderfully entertaining account of his journey across Marco Polo’s 700-year-old route from Jerusalem to Xanadu, the summer palace of Kubla Khan.At the age of twenty-two, Dalrymple left his college in Cambridge to travel to the ruins of Kubla Khan’s stately pleasure dome in Xanadu. As he and his companions travel across the width of Asia—crossing through Acre, Aleppo, Tabriz, Tashkurgan, and other m...

From William Dalrymple—award-winning historian, journalist and travel writer—a masterly retelling of what was perhaps the West’s greatest imperial disaster in the East, and an important parable of neocolonial ambition, folly and hubris that has striking relevance to our own time.With access to newly discovered primary sources from archives in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia and India—including a series of previously untranslated Afghan epic poems and biographies—the author gives us t...

A rich blend of history and spirituality, adventure and politics, laced with the thread of black comedy familiar to readers of William Dalrymple’s previous work.In AD 587, two monks, John Moschos and Sophronius the Sophist, embarked on an extraordinary journey across the Byzantine world, from the shores of the Bosphorus to the sand dunes of Egypt. Their aim: to collect the wisdom of the sages and mystics of the Byzantine East before their fragile world shattered under the eruption ...

Finalist for the Cundill History PrizeONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEARNAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY The Wall Street Journal and NPR“Superb … A vivid and richly detailed story … worth reading by everyone.” -The New York Times Book ReviewFrom the bestselling author of Return of a King

Peeling back the layers of Delhi’s centuries-old history, City of Djinns is an irresistible blend of research and adventure.Sparkling with irrepressible wit, City of Djinns peels back the layers of Delhi's centuries-old history, revealing an extraordinary array of characters along the way--from eunuchs to descendants of great Moguls. With refreshingly open-minded curiosity, author William Dalrymple explores the seven "dead" cities of Delhi as well as the e...

**INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERUSA TODAY BESTSELLERWinner of the Mark Lynton History Prize 2026 * A Kirkus Reviews Best History Book of 2025 * A Library Journal Best Book of the Year * An NPR Book We Loved This YearThe instant New York Times bestseller and international sensation-a sparkling, soaring history of ideas, tracing South Asia's underappreciated role in producing the world as we know it.**For a mille...