Romila Thapar releases Githa Hariharan's latest book 'Almost Home’

What makes a city, or any place, home?

In large parts of the world, including India, the prevailing view of people and places—and their multiple voices—has been a western version. How does this view change when it is located in India, and when the stories are complicated by several cultures, languages, traditions and political debates? From Delhi, Bombay/Mumbai, Ooty and Kashmir to Palestine, Algeria and eleventh-century Córdoba, these intricately carved essays explore cities and other places through the lives of people, and how they see home and belonging. Combining memoir with polemic, historical with imagined narrative, anecdote with poetry, Githa Hariharan recounts defining moments in which people experience the frictions of day-to-day survival, and the collision of ideas, culture, war and colonization. The result is a fascinating and layered story of home: a sense of home, too many homes, broken or lost homes.