Almost Home

Cities and Other Places

01 December, 2014

Githa Hariharan

Fourth Estate,

248 pages, Rs.499

This exploration of the idea of home by the novelist Githa Hariharan is set everywhere from Delhi, Bombay and Ooty to Palestine, Algeria and eleventh-century Cordoba, and features essays on questions such as: What do a medieval city in south India and Washington DC have in common? What do people in Kashmir dream of when they talk about freedom? To whom does Delhi, city of showy monuments and hidden slums, actually belong? Most of all, what makes a city, or any place, home?