City of Djinns, William Dalrymple

City of Djinns is the portrait of a city as has never been attempted before. Meeting an extraordinary array of characters, from the city's elusive eunuchs to the embattled descendants of the great Moghuls, from the nouveauriche Punjabis to the last witnesses of the British Raj, and investigating the resonances of these people and their ways with the India of the past, this is a unique and dazzling feat of research and adventure by one of the finest writers of his generation.
Watched over and protected by the mischievous djinns - spirits invisible to the naked eye, 'like us in all things, but fashioned from fire' - Delhi has been saved many times over the centuries. From the desolate, run-down graveyards in which partridge-fighting has drawn crowds for hundreds of years to the exquisite palaces of the old city which now lie empty and crumbling, Dalrymple comes to know this bewildering place intimately. He conveys the magical nature of this city at the meeting point of all the great cultures of South Asia, a city that has been destroyed and rebuilt, forever being reborn under the care of its guardian djinns.