Available as Paperback, eBook
12 February 2026
Capital is Rana Dasgupta’s Orwell Prize-shortlisted non-fiction debut: an unsparing, lyrical portrait of class and wealth disparity in Delhi
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
In Capital, Rana Dasgupta reveals the red-hot city which erupted from Delhi’s economic boom in the 1990s and 2000s. Slums were bulldozed, luxury shopping malls erected in their place. The outer transformation, stern and abrupt, reached beyond mortar and into minds. Hundreds of thousands streamed in from rural hinterlands, and the city brimmed with possibility.
In this prescient account of the exultation and disparity that would emerge from India’s globalisation, Rana Dasgupta shows us a city’s rebirth – for better and worse – through the eyes of its people. Capital is a history, a warning and a looking glass. It is book for our times.
“Important … His lyrical encounters with a wide range of modern Delhiites reveal a novelist’s ear and are beautifully sketched”
telegraph
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“A terrific portrait of Delhi right now and hits a lot of nails on the head”
Salman Rushdie
“Lyrical and haunting”
international New York Times
“Achingly beautiful … and cleverly tangential”
financial Times
“Intense, lyrical, erudite and powerful”
observer
Rana Dasgupta
Rana Dasgupta is the author of the short story collection Tokyo Cancelled, the novel Solo — which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize 2010 for Best Book — and After Nations. Capital, his first work of non-fiction, was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and the Ondaatje Prize in 2015, and won both the Ryszard Kapuscinski Award and the Émile Guimet Prize in 2017. He was awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize in 2025.
