The Broken Script

Combining immaculate scholarship with extraordinary storytelling, Swapna Liddle has produced an outstanding book of narrative history—on a great city in transition, and on early modern India between 1803 and 1857—that will be read and discussed for decades.
‘Swapna Liddle has written the definitive history of “Company Raj” in Delhi…This wonderful account of the hybrid half-century that connected the late-Mughal world to colonial modernity is essential reading.’—MUKUL KESAVAN, writer
‘Swapna Liddle lovingly portrays the urbanity of Mughal Delhi and its people struggling to cope with the shabbiness produced by colonial rule. The book painstakingly retrieves a history that was systematically erased following the tragic and bloody end of the era of Akbar Shah and Bahadur Shah.’—AMAR FAROOQUI, Professor, Department of History, University of Delhi
‘Urban history at its best…there is a sense of immediacy because we hear the words of the people of the city, the elegant Urdu of the literati as well as the irreverent comments of the flaneurs…a narrative written so accessibly that we can forget that it is based on meticulous research.’—DR NARAYANI GUPTA, Professor of History (retd), Jamia Millia Islamia
‘Not many historians have dealt with the complexities of the later Mughal life so elaborately…The 1857 story brings out many unknown facts. Delhi is a much written about city yet this book will stand apart as a rigorous scholarly text.’—S. IRFAN HABIB, historian and former Maulana Azad Chair, NIEPA
‘In narrating the story of Urdu language and poetry, Swapna Liddle traverses a complex landscape with terrific poise. Fashioning the heart of the Mughal capital at the cusp of modernity, her scholarly book captures the socio-cultural intricacies of Delhi like never before.’—SAIF MAHMOOD, author, Beloved Delhi: A Mughal City and Her Greatest Poets