'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 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

When Rana Dasgupta arrived in Delhi at the turn of the twenty-first century, he had no intention of staying for long, but the city beguiled him - he 'fell in love and in hate with it' - and fifteen years later, Delhi is still his home.

Over these fifteen years, he has watched as the tumult of destruction and creation which accompanies India's economic boom transformed the face of the city. In Capital, he explores the life-changing consequences for Delhi's people, meeting with billionaires and bureaucrats, drug dealers and metal traders, slum dwellers and psychoanalysts. These encounters, interwoven with over a century of history, plunge us into Delhi's intoxicating, sometimes terrifying, story of capitalist transformation - one that has repercussions not only for India, but for everybody's future.

Prizes

Winner of Prix Émile Guimet de Littérature Asiatique 2017 (France),Winner of Ryszard Kapuscinski Award for Literary Reportage 2017 (Poland),Short-listed for RSL Ondaatje Prize 2015 (UK),Short-listed for The Orwell Prize for Books 2015 (UK),Short-listed for Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger 2016 (France)

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 * *

Rana Dasgupta won the 2010 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book for his debut novel Solo. He is the author of a collection of urban folktales, Tokyo Cancelled, which was shortlisted for the 2005 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Capital, his first work of non-fiction, has been shortlisted for The Orwell Prize 2015. His work has also won the Windham-Campbell Prize in 2025. Born in Canterbury in 1971, he now lives in Delhi.