title: The Walls of Delhi: Three Stories
author:  Uday Prakash 
description: "The narrative is hypnotic, not only in its ability to reveal socio-political situations and extreme poverty, but in the way it interweaves the stories with legends and then offers candid statements referencing world events that make the truth of the message of poverty and corruption very real."<b>Maya Fleischman</b>, <i>Foreword Reviews</i> <br /><br />"You finish each piece and its like a slap in the face of realization at whats just occurred, and you cant even feel the full sting until the next day or the next week when your mind has had some time to fully digest everything thats happened.These stories have sticking power."<i>Corduroy Books</i><br /><br />The stories in this collection should be read not only because they are coming from an extremely important voice in Hindi literature, but also because they are not just stories but a profound mapping of our times civilisational crisIs resulting from the blend of an awfully oppressive social order and brutal imperialism.<b></b><i>The New Indian Express</i><br /><br />"Three...stingingly comic tales [with an] appealing mix of social realism and pungent sarcasm. Uday Prakash uses a kind of wry documentary style, combining incisive humour with gentle pathos, interspersed with occasional poetic passages, creating a new kind of narrative style that has been well caught by the translator." <b></b><i>Frontline</i><b></b>(India)<br /><br />"Uday Prakash writes of contemporary India with bleak and unblinking scrutiny irradiated by empathy and humanity. His mastery of metaphor and allegory and the power of his style invoke a timeless culture on the cusp of change." <b>Namita Gokhale</b>, founder-director of The Jaipur Literature Festival and author of<i>The Book of Shiva</i> <br /><br />"I am not particularly fond of literature that thrives only on cons of any society.Yet, although the individual stories build up on the painful and neglected aspects of Indian society, the collection as a whole stands out uniquely having a distinct and original voice. The characters are complete and very much human so that their tales keep lingering in the reader's mind even after finishing the book.In all three stories, the author has succeeded in exploring the grave subjects in an intriguing style of narration and with complete command of a language that disturbs the reader."<i>The Book Outline</i><br /><br />"These are compelling stories, and with his often indirect approachthe narrator squeezing his perspective and person into the story, even if it seems to have little to do directly with itUday Prakash adds yet another interesting layer to the writing. The injustices described can be frustrating for the powerless reader, but the pieces certainly do impress."<i>The Complete Review</i><br /><br />"The referential landscape of Prakashs stories is expansive, ranging from canonical Hindi literary figures such as Premchand and Mukhtibodh as far afield as Osip Mandelstam and Allen Ginsberg. Yet for all their scope, their intended audience is evidently local. The experience of reading them in English serves only to accentuate that the readership to whom they are addressed is neither Anglophone nor faraway, but rather one for whom Delhi is, at least emotionally, not far at all. This distance is bridged to an extent by Jason Grunebaums thoughtful translation, which provides clarity and context without resorting to commentary. Yet the displacement of translation cannot be erasednor should it be. It augments the strangeness and power of Prakashs narratives, which offer a window into an internal dialogue whose raw intensity is rarely encountered in English-language literature from the subcontinent."<i>The Quarterly Conversation<br /></i><br /><br /><i></i>
zlib_text: DELIRIOUS DELHI*
  
    
    
    
    
    
  
  *The cover from this book was inspired first by the movie Om Shanit Om. The [songs from that movie](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92YbtfeI58) blared from passing autorickshaws and tinny mobile pjhone speakers for six months straight, which is why we chose to [recreate the poster](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BnNNqp8Azls/Tk-Nw0AhRAI/AAAAAAAAAJM/6FoKHZ_hh10/s1600/5.jpg).
  
    
  
  But the cover is also a tribute to the custom-made, six-foot-tall Bollywood
  poster we commissioned from a nearly out-of-work poster painter whose studio
  was hidden near Old Delhi. That's quite a story - you [can read it
  here](http://ourdelhistruggle.com/2009/01/06/bollywood-style/).
  
    
  
  ALSO BY DAVE PRAGER
  
   _Poop Culture: How America is Shaped by Its Grossest National_
  
   _Product_ , Feral House, 2007 (as Dave Praeger)
  
  DELIRIOUS DELHI
  
  Inside India’s Incredible Capital
  
  Dave Prager
  
  ![](Images/image00199.jpeg)
  
  ARCADE PUBLISHING • NEW YORK
  
  Copyright © 2011, 2013 by Dave Prager
  
  Al