Fiction as History: The Novel and the City in Modern North India

Explains the Hindi novel's role in anticipating and creating the story of middle-class modernity and modernization in North India.

Vasudha Dalmia offers a panoramic view of the intellectual and cultural life of North India over a century, from the aftermath of the 1857 uprising to the end of the Nehruvian era. The North's historical cities, rooted in an Indo-Persianate culture, began changing more slowly than the Presidency towns founded by the British. Dalmia takes up eight canonical Hindi ...