September nonfiction: Six new books that chronicle the challenges and triumphs of modern India

All information sourced from publishers.

Sheher Mein Gaon: Culture, Conflict and Change in the Urban Villages of Delhi, Ekta Chauhan

Delhi’s urban villages are paradoxical spaces – at once ancient and evolving, marginalised yet central to the city’s modern economy. These are places where centuries-old traditions coexist with pop-up cafés and start-ups, and where the past is never quite past.

Born out of state-led land acquisitions from the early 20th century, these villages were thrust into transformation through urban expansion. What emerged was not a seamless integration, but a complex in-between: part city, part village, part memory, part reinvention. This book journeys into those spaces – exploring how people remember, resist, and reimagine their place in a city that’s always on the move.

Through stories of place, identity, and power, Sheher Mein Gaon uncovers how these neighbourhoods reflect the deeper tensions of modern urban life – between tradition and progress, belonging and exclusion, history and ambition.

Unsilenced: The Jail Diary of an Activist, Seema Azad, translated from the Hindi by Shailza Sharma

On a crisp morning in February 2010, journalist-activist Seema Azad boarded a train from Delhi to Allahabad with a bag of books purchased from the World Book Fair. However, she never reached home. By nightfall, she, along with her partner Vishwa Vijai, had...

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