New India Foundation

Amrita Shah is a leading journalist and non-fiction writer in India. After graduating in English Literature from Elphinstone College, Mumbai in 1983 she wrote for various Indian and international publications including the American Time magazine and was best known for her pioneering investigative series of articles on the Mumbai underworld. She went on to edit the monthly features magazine, Debonair and launched the Indian edition of Elle as Editor in 1996. She wrote a fortnightly column on socio-political trends for the national daily, The Indian Express and was its Contributing Editor from 1999 to 2009. She has been a fellow of the Centre for Contemporary Studies at the Indian Institute of Science, the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University, the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study and the Research Institute Advanced De Nantes.

NIF Books

Ahmedabad, India's seventh-largest city, a six-hundred-year-old former textile town where Mahatma Gandhi launched his struggle against British rule, the hotbed for communal violence. The city is known today for being Prime Minister Narendra Modi's stronghold, the model for a new, market-led vision of development and a harbinger of the changes sweeping through the new India.

In this intimate biography, Amrita Shah travels through time and a landscape of abandoned mills and urban beautification projects; stone monuments and modernist architecture. She visits neighbourhoods divided by sectarian violence and ghettos borne on the outskirts of the city. Among the many people she meets are a young embroiderer from Asarwa–Chamanpura, the architect of the Riverfront project, a poet-turned-civil servant, a popular singing duo and a well-heeled socialite.

This is the story of roadmaps and rivers, kings and kingmakers, merchants and savants; of Dalit labourers and women bootleggers, displaced Muslims and a euphoric middle class. It is also the incredible story of hope and vulnerability at the heart of a metropolis.

Searing, illuminating, and beautifully written, Ahmedabad: A City in the World is essential reading for an insight into contemporary India.

Purchase: Amazon

Reviews:

‘A riveting picture of a city’ — The Independent

‘No book on the city of Ahmedabad has been written with such elegance and evocativeness’ — The Wire

‘Combines solid research with literary grace ... Both a political and an intellectual journey ... elegantly crafted and gripping’ — U.R. Ananthamurthy

‘This perceptive, sometimes bitterly funny, book portrays Ahmedabad uniquely, giving us the long view without ever lapsing into abstraction or diluting the immediacy of the present moment’ — Amit Chaudhuri

‘This book deserves reading not just because of what it reveals of Ahmedabad but of what Ahmedabad reveals about India’ — Biblio

‘A thoughtful, well-crafted book. Shrewd, tough, topical and anecdotal, its style is almost symbolic of the city Shah captures so joyously and creatively’ — India Today

Shah has the poetic gift of discovering metaphors’ — Mint

‘In this richly researched and elegantly written book, Amrita Shah explores the paradoxes of Ahmedabad: a city that is at once nativist and cosmopolitan, caring and hedonistic, austere and exhibitionist. This fine study should serve as a model for other works on the rapidly changing cityscapes of twenty-first century India’ — Ramachandra Guha

‘Shah penetrates this unusual city as it hasn't been before’ — Aakar Patel