SAJA-NY: author William Dalrymple at Asia Society - Monday, March 26th

Terrific event, folks. When Dalrymple spoke on his last book tour, many of you attended his wonderful NYC talk at the Metropolitan Museum of Art... You will learn a lot from him (bio below) From: Aseem Chhabra Asia Society, South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA) New York Chapter and the Indo American Arts Council (IAAC) present Meet the Author - William Dalrymple "The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty Delhi, 1857" Monday, March 26 at 6:30 pm Reception and Book signing follows. Asia Society, 725 Park Avenue at 70th St New York City $7 Student w/ID, Seniors; $10 Members (including SAJA members); $15 Nonmembers To register ONLINE CLICK HERE To register by PHONE call (M-F 10am to 5pm): 212-517-ASIA To register by FAX (credit card orders only please): 212-517-8315 About the book: From the author of The City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi and The White Mughals comes the compelling story, drawn from a treasure trove of Indian historical documents, of Bahadur Shah II the last Mughal emperor and the final days of his capital Delhi before its ignominious destruction by the British in 1857. Dalrymple will be interviewed by historian and author Maya Jasanoff (Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750-1850). About the author William Dalrymple was born in Scotland and brought up on the shores of the Firth of Forth. He wrote the highly acclaimed bestseller In Xanadu when he was twenty-two. The book won the 1990 Yorkshire Post Best First Work Award and a Scottish Arts Council Spring Book Award; it was also shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize. In 1989 Dalrymple moved to Delhi where he lived for six years researching his second book, City of Djinns, which won the 1994 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award. From the Holy Mountain, his acclaimed study of the demise of Christianity in its Middle Eastern homeland, was awarded the Scottish Arts Council Autumn Book Award for 1997; it was also shortlisted for the 1998 Thomas Cook Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize. A collection of his writings about India, The Age of Kali, won the French Prix D'Astrolabe in 2005. White Mughals was published in 2003, the book won the Wolfson Prize for History 2003, the Scottish Book of the Year Prize, and was shortlisted for the PEN History Award, the Kiryama Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. William Dalrymple is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Asiatic Society. In 2002 he was awarded the Mungo Park Medal by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society for his ‘outstanding contribution to travel literature’. He wrote and presented the television series Stones of the Raj and Indian Journeys, which won the Grierson Award for Best Documentary Series at BAFTA in 2002. His Radio 4 series on the history of British spirituality and mysticism, The Long Search, won the 2002 Sandford St Martin Prize for Religious Broadcasting and was described by the judges as 'thrilling in its brilliance... near perfect radio. In December 2005 his article on the madrasas of Pakistan was awarded the prize for Best Print Article of the Year at the 2005 FPA Media Awards. June 2006 he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters honoris causa from the University of St Andrews “for his services to literature and international relations, to broadcasting and understanding”. In 2007, The Last Moghal won the prestigous Duff Cooper Prize for History and Biography. William is married to the artist Olivia Fraser, and they have three children. They now divide their time between London and Delhi.
Reviews from abroad:
[Dalrymple] builds an urban narrative [of Delhi] as evocative as Richard Cobb's depiction of Revolutionary Paris . . .
There is so much to admire in this book - the depth of historical research, the finely evocative writing, the extraordinary rapport with the cultural world of late Mughal India. It is also in many ways a remarkably humane and egalitarian history. . .
This is a splendid work of empathetic scholarship. As the 150th anniversary of the uprising dawns there will be many attempts to revisit these bloody, chaotic, cataclysmic events; but few reinterpretations of 1857 will be as bold, as insightful, or as challenging as this.- David Arnold, Times Literary Supplement
Brilliantly nuanced . . . Dalrymple has here written an account of the Indian mutiny such as we have never had before, of the events leading up to it and of its aftermath, seen through the prism of the last emperor's life. He has vividly described the street life of the Mughal capital in the days before the catastrophe happened, he has put his finger deftly on every crucial point in the story, which earlier historians have sometimes missed, and he has supplied some of the most informative footnotes I have ever read. On top of that, he has splendidly conveyed the sheer joy of researching a piece of history, something every true historian knows . . . I had thought that Dalrymple would never surpass his performance in writing From the Holy Mountain, but The Last Mughal has caused me to think again. - Geoffrey Moorhouse, The Guardian.
A riveting account . . . It is neither wholly a biography of Zafar, nor solely the story of the siege and capture of Delhi. Instead Mr. Dalrymple charts the course of the uprising and the siege, weaving into his story the unfolding tragedy of Zafar's last months. The animating spirit of the book is Delhi itself . . .
It is here that the originality of [Dalrymple's] new book lies. - The Economist

[The Last Mughal] shows the way history should be written: not as a catalogue of dry-as-dust kings, battles and treaties but to bring the past to the present, put life back in characters long dead and gone and make the reader feel he is living among them, sharing their joys, sorrows and apprehensions . . .
Dalrymple's book rouses deep emotions. It will bring tears to the eyes of every Dilliwala, among whom I count myself. - Khushwant Singh, Outlook India