Writing the City is a collection of essays that portrays both the commonalities and the diversity of the cities of contemporary South Asia. Through their deeply personal accounts, the contributors explore the relationship of their writings to place and space and thus present the many ways in which city-spaces are created in literature today. Food, travel, architecture, education, memories, political turmoil and a deep sense of nostalgia come together in this collection to provide vivid and vibrant accounts of the authors' creative journeys.
The contributors to this collection include well-known names such as Amitabha Bagchi, Anees Salim, Anita Nair, Anjum Hasan, Ankush Saikia, Chandrahas Choudhury, Cyrus Mistry, Manju Kapur, Saikat Majumdar, Samrat Upadhyay, Siddharth Chowdhury, Sumana Roy, Tabish Khair and Zac O'Yeah.
Stuti Khanna, the editor of this collection, is an Associate Professor of Literature at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. She obtained her Master's degree from Delhi University and her D. Phil. from Oxford University. She is the author of the monograph The Contemporary Novel and the City: Re-conceiving National and Narrative Form (2013). She is interested in the ways in which postcolonial urbanity in South Asia inflects and shapes twentieth-century narratives.
She is interested in the ways in which postcolonial urbanity in South Asia inflects and shapes twentieth-century narratives.
Introduction 1. Bombay and Delhi: The Two Cities of My Life Chandrahas Choudhury 2. Cities are Made for Adventures Zac O’Yeah 3. Dreaming of a Lost City in a Mad Country Samrat Upadhyay 4. The Tolstoy of the Biharis Siddharth Chowdhury 5. Growing Up in the Chicken’s Neck Sumana Roy 6. In Search of Anjum Hasan Anjum Hasan 7. Living in the Place of Your Imagination Manju Kapur 8. Sometimes a Hawk is Just a Hawk Amitabha Bagchi 9. Tales from the Nameless Town Anees Salim 10. The Cosmopolitanism of Small Towns Tabish Khair 11. Dying Modern Saikat Majumdar 12. The Times they are A-Changing. . . Cyrus Mistry 13. The Writer and the City Ankush Saikia 14. When the Lights Go Down in My City Anita Nair About the Authors Publisher’s Acknowledgements