Mayank Austen Soofi
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Author of four alternative guidebooks to Delhi, Mayank Austen Soofi spends his time in bookshops and bylanes, observing every corner of the city. Once a hotel steward, he is best known for his website and blog, The Delhi Walla, in which he details Delhi’s lives and loves. Mayank Austen Soofi is a writer and photojournalist. His blog, The Delhi Walla, an alternative guide to the city, has been praised as being “the most compelling guide to India’s capital” (The Independent) and “a one-man encyclopedia of the city” (Time Out Delhi) . The blog is now available in the form of four books:The Delhi Walla – Portraits, Delhi Food, Delhi Hangouts and Delhi Monuments (HarperCollins). His latest book, Nobody Can Love You More(Penguin India), is the result of three years spent documenting the lives of people in Delhi’s red light district. he runs a blog: www.thedelhiwalla.com Soofi was born in Nainital in the mountains of Uttarakhand and moved to Delhi around 2004. He uses ‘Austen’ as his middle name as a tribute to the author Jane Austen, about whom he often blogs. In 2011, he published four alternative guidebooks to the city of Delhi: The Delhi Walla – Portraits, Delhi Food, Delhi Hangouts and Delhi Monuments. He has initiated many projects, including Mission Delhi, which aims to profile 1% of Delhi’s 14 million people, and a blog dedicated to Arundhati Roy’s debut novel, The God of Small Things, and to its readers. He recently started a reading club called The Delhi Proustians, which centers around the French novelist Marcel Proust and his seven volume novel, In Search of Lost Time. Nobody Can Love You More |