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{{Short description|1990 book by Khushwant Singh}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2019}}
{{Use Indian English|date=February 2019}}
{{Multiple issues|
{{essay-like|date=August 2018}}
{{unreferenced|date=August 2018}}
}}

{{infobox book | 
| name = Delhi: A Novel
| title_orig =
| translator = Irfan Ahmad Khan [[Lahore, Pakistan]]
| image = 
| caption =
| author = [[Khushwant Singh]]
| illustrator =
| cover_artist =
| country = [[India]]
| language = [[English language|English]]
| series =
| genre = [[Historical novel]]
| publisher = [[Penguin Books]] India Ltd
| published = 1990
| media_type =
| pages =
| isbn =
| preceded_by =
| followed_by =
}}
'''''Delhi: A Novel''''' (published 1990) is a historical novel by [[India]]n writer [[Khushwant Singh]].

==Text==
The book moves backwards and forwards in time through the history of [[Delhi]]. It has as its backdrop the story of a journalist fallen on bad times (possibly an autobiographical figure) and his relationship with a [[Hijra (South Asia)|hijra (eunuch)]] named Bhagmati.

This vast, erotic, irreverent [[masterpiece|magnum opus]] on the city of Delhi starts with the narrator, suggestively Khushwant Singh himself, just returning from [[England]] after ‘having his fill of whoring in foreign lands’, a bawdy, aging reprobate who loves the city of [[Delhi]], as much as he loves the ugly but energetic hermaphrodite whore Bhagmati, whom he literally picks up from a deserted road on a hot Delhi summer noon. Having no place to go after completing her jail sentence in the dreaded [[Tihar Jail]] (probably for selling sex), she begs to be taken under his wing. The kind [[sardar]] obliges, and thus begins a wonderful relationship of ups and downs in the narrator’s life. Bhagmati, neither male nor female but possessive of great exotic sex appeal, vitalizes his life amidst the majestic remains of Delhi in its heyday, and even saves the narrator's life from the mad mobs of the 1984 [[anti-Sikh riots]].

Displaying his trademark gift of literal humour and a professional historian’s control over narration, the writer takes turn, chapter by chapter, on the history of the great city and his own sexual exploits and misadventures with ''vilaity mems'' and lonely army wives whom he is supposed to ‘show Delhi’, other eccentric journalists, editors and bureaucrats, a half-mad Sikh ex-army driver, a fanatic [[gurudwara]] {{transl|pa|bhaiji}}, among many other colourful characters. All the while the narrator travels through times Delhi has seen, telling us in a most interesting manner, as the first person, all that [[Delhi]] has been to [[Nadir Shah]], [[Taimur]] and [[Aurangzeb]] etc. who plundered and destroyed her, and to [[Meer Taqi Meer]] and [[Bahadur Shah Zafar]] whom [[Delhi]] destroyed; he looks through the eyes of semi-historical characters like Musaddi Lal [[Kayasth]], a [[Hindu]] [[religious conversion|convert]] working under the hostile [[Ghiyas ud din Balban]] in the fourteenth century—the dawn of the [[Mughal Empire]], right up to Nihal Singh, a [[Sikh]] [[mercenary]] who settles his historical score with the [[Mughals]] by helping the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|British]] in crushing the [[Indian Rebellion of 1857|Sepoy Mutiny]] of 1857 – the sunset of the Mughal empire, Mrs. Alice Aldwell, the wife to an English civil servant who converts to [[Islam]] to escape persecution (but is still raped), the dynamic, inventive and shrewd [[Punjabi people|Punjabi]] entrepreneurs who won the British contracts to build [[Edwin Lutyens|Lutyens]]'s Delhi ([[Sir Sobha Singh]], the writer's father, was one such person), to an angry young Hindu youth whose sister was abducted and raped in Pakistan, and has been disposed-of from [[Pakistani Punjab|Western Punjab]] during the [[Partition of India]], looking for some work ends up signing up with [[Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh]] and takes revenge by inflicting violence upon Delhi Muslims, and accidentally becoming witness to perhaps the most important and decisive event in the country’s history—the [[assassination]] of [[Mahatma Gandhi]].

The novel ends with the terrorized narrator watching his [[Anti-Sikh riots|Sikh neighbours mercilessly burnt alive]] by people angered due to the killing of [[Indira Gandhi]] by her Sikh guards.

== Writing ==

Singh claims it took him almost twenty-five years to complete this novel. He dedicates it to his son Rahul Singh and Niloufer Billimoria. 'History provided me a skeleton', he jokes, 'I covered it with flesh and injected blood and a lot of seminal fluid into it'.

Some parts of the novel were also published in the ''[[Evergreen Review]]'' and ''[[The Illustrated Weekly of India]]''.

== Urdu translation ==
This novel was Urdu translated by Irfan Ahmad Khan, Lahore, Pakistan. Singh himself allowed Khan to recover royalty of his unauthorised publications from the publishers of Pakistan. The Urdu translation publications were in October 1998, April 1999, January 2000, May 2000, February 2005.

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

[[Category:1990 novels]]
[[Category:Indian historical novels in English]]
[[Category:1990 Indian novels]]
[[Category:Novels set in Delhi]]
[[Category:Novels by Khushwant Singh]]
[[Category:Sikhism in fiction]]
[[Category:1984 anti-Sikh riots]]
[[Category:Cultural depictions of Indira Gandhi]]
[[Category:LGBT literature in India]]

Delhi: A Novel - Revision history

Bot at 09:11, 18 June 2022