Reported by business-standard.com
The Shortest History of DelhiBy John ZubrzyckiPublished by Picador India214 pages ₹479 Delhi, with its multiple identities and contested pasts, is like a scratch card. Look below any surface and a story reveals itself. It is a city where centuries coexist, where empires have risen and fallen, where conquerors have built over — and often alongside — the ruins of their predecessors, and where the past has a habit of hobnobbing with the present.
To capture its history in just 214 pages, introduction and index included, seems an impossible task. Yet John Zubrzycki manages to pull it off, offering through The Shortest History of Delhi a remarkably rich and engaging introduction to one of the world’s most historically complex cities.
There is, of course, no single history of Delhi. There is its political history, its architectural history, the cultural and social histories, and the countless stories of those who have inhabited it, shaped it, destroyed it, and rebuilt it. Mr Zubrzycki, who holds a doctorate in Indian history from the University of New South Wales, served as a diplomat at the Australian High Commission in New Delhi, and has written five other books on India, including The Shortest History of India, skillfully bringing these strands together.
