As urban problems abound, so do radical solutions. This thread shows some selected books of writers who have been guiding stars in my analysis of urban space over the past ten or so years, and some which I still want to read and interrogate more closely.

One of the threads of the planned bookshop is called Urban India. I mentioned some of the books I want to feature when I wrote about a course I taught at Temple University Japan. They are: Rana Dasgupta’s “Capital: A Portrait of Twenty-First Century Delhi”, Siddharta Deb’s “The Beautiful and the Damned”, Kushanava Choudhury’s, “Epic City” and William Dalrymple’s, “City of Djinns”.

The main criteria of including the books back then was accessibility via Western publishers, significantly limiting the field of potential titles. Alas, much of that restriction remains. Nonetheless, the lack of women writers in my original post is striking, and my shop’s thread must contain some of these underrepresented voices. I also regard these threads as fluid containers for the books. If I sell a book from within, I might replace it with a fresh copy, or with a different book altogether.