2015 Book prize short list

Capital

Rana Dasgupta

Published by: Canongate

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. InĀ 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. Taken from Canongate