Delhi: A Novel

Oh what a book. many years back when I cared too much about what others thought of me, the first edition of the book was out in hardcover with a titilating paining on the cover, a half naked dancing girl [after reading the novel, I now realise it might not have been a girl but a member of the third sex] - I thought it was risky to buy the book and worse still get drawn into the shady world of Khushwant Singh's novels. I finally bought a more recent copy with a nice cover of one of the Delhi monuments in watercolour and read it.
I do not want to give away anything, but only suggest that this is the best history of Delhi you will get to read. William Dalrymple's book actually pales to insignificance. Although to be fair to Dalrymple, he dealt only with the late 18th to 19th century of the city's history.
Reading through Mr Singh's book, and the subtitle clearly mentions it to be a novel, I felt that this was far from a novel. In fact it was history and biography. But, I guess, it is so exaggeratedly real the the author had to mark it as a novel.