Sold out. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi; the above photo is by Unknown] Nobody Can Love You More: Life in Delhi’s Red Light District, a book by The Delhi Walla, was recently published by Penguin India. Priced at Rs 399, it was a hardbound edition. The other day I received a mail from Penguin's R. Sivapriya, one of the most excellent editors on the planet. I'm sharing the contents of the letter with her permission: Dear Mayank, The first print run (4000 copies) of Nobody Can Love You More has sold out in less than a year. Congratulations! I am thrilled. We are going to do a paperback edition in February 2014. (There are a few hundred copies of the book in

Among the world’s best quirky guidebooks. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] The UK-based The Guardian daily calls The Delhi Walla books as one of “the best quirky guidebooks from around the world.” Writing in the newspaper, London-based literary walker Henry Eliot says: The Delhi Walla is Delhi's most idiosyncratic and eccentric website," writes author William Dalrymple. The man behind the sprawling blog is Mayank Austen Soofi... who has produced these four Delhi Walla books covering the best monuments, food, hangouts and people in the city. These beautifully designed paeans to the city delve into places most international travel guides don't reach, from the Agrasen ki Baoli step well, a stunning ancient water source at the heart of a busy financial district, to the best

The lovely claustrophobia. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] In 2010, HarperCollins India published The Delhi Walla volumes, a series of four guidebooks on Delhi -- on the city's monuments, food and drinks, hangouts and its people. Three years later, HarperCollins India re-issues the books in a boxed set. The original price of each book is Rs 199. But the boxed set is priced – not Rs 796 – but Rs 599. One side of the slipcase shows the stone tower of Qutub Minar in Mehrauli; the other side displays the dargah of sufi ascetic Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. The Book Review, a literary journal, reviewed The Delhi Walla books, saying: The four books clearly cater not just to the tourist but also to the

Life in a red light district. [By Shweta; photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Critic Shweta discussed Nobody Can Love You More: Life in Delhi’s Red Light District, a book by The Delhi Walla, in the social-cataloging website Good Reads. Click here to read the review, or see below. IT HAS always been easy to read fiction as it magically takes you to a place comfortable, safe and happy. After a long day at work when you wish to unwind, you grab a book that would wipe away all the stress of the day. Surprisingly, Mayank Austen Soofi’s book does the exact same thing albeit the fact that it is gazillion miles away from magic land, fairies and wizards. The said book is a

Life in a red light district. [Photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The May-June 2013 issue of Biblio: A Review of Books, India’s most prestigious literary journal, showcases Nobody Can Love You More: Life in Delhi’s Red Light District, a book by The Delhi Walla, on its front page. The cover picture is taken from inside the book. The journal has excerpted the book’s first chapter, which is titled I Had Come Too Far. To read it, you may buy Biblio, or you may get a copy of the book. Here is the first paragraph of the first chapter of Nobody Can Love You More: Take Sushma. No single cataclysmic event changed the progression of her life. One day led to another. The

Life in a red light district. [By Geetanjali Chitnis; photo by Marina Bang] Bangalore-based writer Geetanjali Chitnis discussed Nobody Can Love You More: Life in Delhi’s Red Light District, a book by The Delhi Walla in her blog, which is named after her. Go to the blog to read the review, or see below. MY FIRST serious attempt at reading non-fiction. You need to run with the flow, right from the beginning. It feels like one is being thrown into the deep end, so questioning the style or the author’s choices is futile. In his book Nobody Can Love You More: Life in Delhi's Red Light District, Mayank Austen Soofi is like a guide, and as a reader, it is your job to

Life in a red light district. [By KG Sreenivas] KG Sreenivas discussed Nobody Can Love You More: Life in Delhi’s Red Light District, a book by The Delhi Walla in the literary magazine Earthen Lamp Journal. Click here to read on the magazine's website or see below. IF THERE is one sentence in Mayank Austen Soofi's Nobody Can Love You More that nearly sums up the writer's interiorization of his subject, it has to be 'I'm home.' It is the end line of the second chapter titled 'No Rooms of Their Own'. Soofi is in the red light district of Delhi on GB Road close to the seventeenth century Ajmeri Gate in Old Delhi. One evening, as Soofi surveys the GB Road corridor,

Life in a red light district. [By Rakhshanda Jalil] Rakhshanda Jalil discussed Nobody Can Love You More: Life in Delhi’s Red Light District, a book by The Delhi Walla in the Karachi-based daily Dawn. See below. PROBING, PENSIVE, perceptive Nobody Can Love You More (Penguin Viking) takes us into the heart of Delhi’s red-light district with an unself-conscious ease and disarming unpretentiousness. In its author, Mayank Austen Soofi we have a Manto of our times and in the book’s central character, Sushma, a latter-day version of Manto’s Sultanas and Saugandhis. Like the Sultana of Kaali Shalwar, Soofi’s Sushma too lives in a kotha on G. B. Road facing the shunting sheds of the Delhi railway station and ekes out a living by selling

Life in a red light district. [By Atish Patel] Atish Patel of Reuters discussed Nobody Can Love You More: Life in Delhi’s Red Light District, a book by The Delhi Walla. Click here to read it on the agency’s website, or see below. SUSHMA LOOKS like she is in her late forties; she is not sure about her age. It is not her real name but the one she goes by in New Delhi's red light district. Every morning at 2:30 a.m., she wakes up, drinks a cup of tea and paints her face with make-up before stepping out into the street to look for men who will pay her around two dollars to have sex. Sushma is among the women, men and children living

Life in a red light district. [By Raza Rumi] Raza Rumi discussed Nobody Can Love You More: Life in Delhi’s Red Light District, a book by The Delhi Walla in the Lahore-based weekly The Friday Times. Click here to read it on the magazine’s website, or see below. WRITING ABOUT the lives of "fallen women" is a problematic endeavor, especially in South Asia where the morality of the middle classes defines the views of the "educated". There is too much romance, tragedy or judgment in such writing. So for an English-language writer to humanize women (and increasingly men) who pursue sex work as a source of earning a livelihood is often quite difficult. Three years ago, when Mayank Austen Soofi told me about his