Remembering Delhi: Mental Space and Urban Histories in City of Djinns

This paper critically examines William Dalrymple’s City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi (1993) through the lenses of narrative form, psychogeography, and mental space. By blending travel writing, memoir, and history, Dalrymple reimagines Delhi as a layered palimpsest where past and present intersect. The text maps the city affectively, turning ruins, rituals, and folklore into sites of memory. Walking and witnessing emerge as spatial practices that resist erasure and sustain urban consciousness. Positioned within postcolonial urbanism and memory studies, this study highlights the experiential and narrative dimensions of Delhi’s evolving identity.