Hyderabad Book Recommendations

Be sure to check out my other Hyderabad posts. I also have a separate post of reading recommendations for undivided Andhra Pradesh, which includes Telugu literature. Check that out if you wish, and there is some subject matter crossover. This Hyderabad post is more substantive, though, as I focused my reading on the city which is the only part of Andhra/Telangana that I’ve visited so far. You may also like my post on interesting historical information about Hyderabad.

Hyderabad is poorly represented in fiction, which is unfortunate and surprising considering the city is a goldmine for stories. There is a lot of great non-fiction on Hyderabad, though.

I bought all of my books on Amazon. I sadly didn’t get to check out any local bookstores in Hyderabad, though there were a few that were on my list of things to do but never got around to. Luna looked nice, there’s the book section in the old city near the clocktower (I went as they were closing in the evening and it looked amazing), and there’s the Abids book bazaar. There’s also the recently opened Off the Shelf. Other than the old city book section, I'm not sure if any places have Hyderabad specific sections, but two Crosswords I saw at the mall did not.

Nonfiction first, then fiction.

Non-Fiction

If you only read one thing about Hyderabad, read the Hyderabad chapter Under the Charminar in William Dalrymple’s Age of Kali. Highly recommended, worth the few hundred rupees that the book will cost you, and you’ll want that book anyway for further India travels. There’s another recommended read from Dalrymple in The Guardian, but know that reading this does not exempt you from reading Under the Charminar.

Hyderabad has a fair amount of good non-fiction written about it, and not just by William Dalrymple, but The Great Hyderabad Book has yet to be written, something which weaves together the city’s past and present, its different communities and cultural currents, into a unified whole. I hope that happens one day.

Of course, White Mughals is THE non-fiction book to read on Hyderabad, though it may not be the best single “Hyderabad” book to read because its scope is on a specific time period in Hyderabad’s history, and more than being about Hyderabad, it is about British/Indian relations, the social milieu of 18th/19th century British India, and the relationship between Hyderabad’s British resident and a local Muslim woman and how it played into the politics of the time. But I’d rank it among the best Indian history books that I’ve read, from what I’ve read, though I’m sorry to say I actually haven’t read the whole thing. I got through around 150 pages 6+ years ago but I didn’t have the time necessary then to devote to a fairly dense history book. What I read was excellent though and I look forward to picking it up again one day, it’s just a bit much to read while I travel all the time. 

There is a BBC documentary version called The White Mughal, which focuses on the story of the British resident/Muslim woman relationship, hence the title change from the plural to the singular (it’s not as interesting as the more expansive material in the book, and it's a bit hard to follow at times, but it was a decent watch, and the visuals do a nice job of portraying the forlorn glamor and beauty of Hyderabad). Unfortunately the movie version to be directed by and starring Ralph Fiennes never got made and probably never will.

A broader Hyderabad history book that I can strongly recommend for anyone interested is The Last Nizam by John Zubrzycki. Despite the title, it covers the entire history of the Nizams, though it doesn’t cover anything before or after. It is a very well written and entertaining read. The first 100 or so pages are a fast and furious run through numerous Nizams and prime ministers and British residents, and even if you, like me, are unable to keep track of much of who is who and what is happening, there are still interesting stories and details on nearly every page. The second hundred or so pages were more comprehensible for me, focusing mostly on early to mid-20th century history and Mir Osman Ali Khan (the last Nizam back when the title meant anything), which was all fascinating. The third and final hundred or so pages are focused on the titular last Nizam who left India to go live on a farm in Australia. At this point it’s not really about Hyderabad for most of it, but it’s an interesting and poignant story. It occasionally gets bogged down in the byzantine ins and outs of the financial mess that he got into, but it’s pretty easy to skim through those parts without missing anything meaningful. For a cliffnotes version of his life, the NYT obit is great. Recommended for history lovers, it’s not for everyone but if it’s your sort of thing then it’s a great read. 

I added all of the writer’s other books to my Amazon cart (I already read his magic book, a very special interest book but it was awesome, magic is underrated, and I have since read his short history of India book, another great read). His second book The Mysterious Mr Jacob is partly set in Hyderabad, telling the story (featured briefly in The Last Nizam) of the diamond merchant who sells one of the world’s largest diamonds to the Nizam and ends up in a huge legal battle when the Nizam tries to return it (it later became a paperweight by the next Nizam who found it in his father’s shoe). The history of the Nizams is just one ridiculous story like this after another.

A more comprehensive Hyderabad history, which covers everything from the Qutb Shahis to modern day politics, is Hyderabad by Narendra Luther. I’m mixed on it. It covers a lot so it’s good for reference, and I enjoyed its attempts at incorporating local legends into the history (however controversial this has turned out to be, I won’t get into it here, but it seems some very sad people want to rename the city partly because of what this book alleges). But it’s not a very engaging read for a lot of it (which would be fine if it were an academic work, but it’s very much a popular history book), which was especially apparent while reading this and The Last Nizam concurrently, as the latter is just much better written. 

At times it dramatizes the history/legends, which I enjoyed in the beginning, getting an Amar Chitra Katha take on the founding of the city, but during parts where I didn’t have enough background to hang the events on I got lost and was like “Why am I reading a partly made up dialogue between a statesman and a general whom I’ve never heard of, about events I only vaguely understand?” But there are parts I really liked, and there are things you won’t find in most other books on the city. It’s the sort of history book where if you don’t care it won’t make you care, but if you do care and you have enough background knowledge then there’s a lot of interesting stuff. 

Chapters are often standalone, so if you just want to read the chapter on the Nizam's fancy dress party you can, or the chapter on the city’s poetry culture, and so on. I loved the parts where the writer goes into an old palace and talks to the guard there. I really liked some of the later political chapters, such as the one on NTR and the one on Chandrababu Naidu. I’m not sure there’s a better overall Hyderabad book. The same writer has a few other books, including Legendotes of Hyderabad, which I think I would have liked more than a straightforward history book, though I haven’t had a chance to flip through that.

I also got a collection of writings on the city called The Untold Charminar. I wouldn’t say I loved it or found much of it to be revelatory, but I enjoyed it. I probably read around half of them in full, reading the first page of all and then skimming through to see if I wanted to read more. 

Some highlights: An abridged version of William Dalrymple’s Hyderabad chapter that I highly recommended above is in here. There’s a chapter of historic traveler’s accounts compiled by Narendra Luther which are great if you don’t read them in another book. The second chapter is a great short read on the history of the Qutb Shahis and what makes them special and interesting. There’s a short story by Wajida Tabassum that introduced me to her work and led me to her short story collection which I don’t think I would have discovered otherwise (see my fiction section). There are a handful of writeups from people who lived there or traveled there frequently, giving their impressions on the city, none are that interesting on their own but the sum of them gave me a portrait of a city that is more laid back, hospitable, and cultured than perhaps any other of India’s megacities, a world that may be fading but I think still exists. The chapter on Telugu cinema’s vigilante action heroine Vijayashanti was perhaps the most eye opening of all (even though the chapter itself was lame academic BS). I spent half an hour reading her wikipedia page and watching youtube videos of her, it was intellectually and spiritually enlightening.

The Untold Charminar also contained an excerpt from a book called City of Legends by Ian Austin, and from the excerpt I thought this might be the best book available on Hyderabad. Unfortunately I can’t find a reasonably priced copy on Amazon India or US. Gotta hit up the book bazaars, I guess?

There’s a similar book collecting Hyderabad writings called Hyderabad Hazir Hai which is free on Kindle Unlimited and I planned to check it out but despite my repeated requests my wife never lends me her account. Sorry everyone. It looks good though, based on the free sample I’d say it’s probably as good as the other one. The first chapter on Deccan history and the Dakhni language is very good.

I can’t say I feel a need to read a book all about the Qutb Shahis anytime soon, but if I did, Golconda Bagnagar Hyderabad: Rise and Fall of a Global Metropolis in Medieval India by Serish Nanisetti is the one to read (currently free on Kindle, though the paperback is oddly very expensive). One day. On the Deccan sultanates more broadly, there are a number of books by Richard Eaton and Rebel Sultans by Manu Pillai.

And The Days of the Beloved by Harriet Ronken Lynton and Mohini Rajan sounds wonderful. It focuses on the era of the sixth Nizam and seems less a straightforward history book and more a portrait of life in the era. Cheap on Kindle but the physical copy is very expensive in India. US Amazon has better deals. 

There’s a 1915 book called The Harim and the Purdah by Elizabeth Cooper that has two short chapters on Hyderabad, mostly about the lives of Muslim women living behind the purdah. There are a few other chapters on India as well. You can read it online here. It’s interesting to read an old traveler’s account. An excerpt: 

Slavery exists still in Hyderabad, although in a modified form. No person of good family would think of selling a slave, and the slaves themselves feel the honour of belonging to one of the old families. In a quarrel with a servant a slave will draw herself up proudly and say, “You are only a servant—I belong to the family.” Both servants and slaves are treated with a familiarity unknown in the West. They take part in the conversation, enter the rooms without knocking—in fact, I don’t believe there is such a thing as a locked door in all India—and talk to the mistress on terms of equality. While at dinner a small boy, very prettily dressed, came to the hostess and snuggled his head against her, while he stared at the peculiar-looking foreign woman opposite. I asked if he was her son. She turned his face up to study it more carefully, then said, “No; he is the son of one of my sister’s slaves.”

For some quick online reading on the city’s heritage, I recommend the Deccan Archives Website and Instagram (they do heritage walks, as I mentioned in the main Hyderabad post), and the Hyderabad History Project Medium page and Instagram (most of this is by Yunus Lasania, who also does heritage walks mentioned in the main post). The Instagram page The Golconda Collective is good too. Also, there’s a string of short pieces written by Sam Dalrymple (William’s son, who has an excellent Substack, so far no posts on Hyderabad but I suspect some will come soon) on the Deccan Heritage Foundation website. DHF also has a guidebook on Hyderabad which I suspect is good, I used and liked the Hampi book from the same series.

Also, there’s the Beyond Charminar podcast hosted by Yunus Lasania, each episode is about some aspect of Hyderabad’s history and culture. I listened to a handful of episodes. I really loved the episode with Sam Dalrymple which discussed the historical connections between Hyderabad and Yemen, amongst other things (Sam will soon publish a book on the subject). I liked some other episodes as well, though I admit a lot of it contained more detail than I needed. Still, recommended, at least go through the episode list to see what interests you. Unfortunately the sound quality on many episodes was poor, or at least too poor for me to hear in an Indian taxi ride without noise canceling headphones. 

Lastly, some amazing old photos of Hyderabad.

Since my visit I came across two potentially noteworthy books. The first is Beyond Biryani by Dinesh C. Sharma, which traces the development of modern Hyderabad and seems good from the sample. The second is Echoes from the Past by Shahid Husain Zuberi, an associate of the Nizams who originally wrote it in Urdu, so it could have an interesting perspective. I can’t find a sample but the review in Scroll said it is “as much a biography of the Nizam family as it is an intellectual tourist guide to the landmarks of the city.”

Also, one journalist who has done noteworthy work on Hyderabad is Daneesh Majid. He’s covered many interesting topics that get under the skin of the city. I liked the one on humorous Dakhni poetry.

Fiction

Hyderabad is poorly represented in fiction, unfortunately, especially given its rich history and how much potential there is for great stories to be set here. I read somewhere, I forget where, that even under the Nizams Hyderabad was a center of Urdu poetry but didn’t have much of a literary scene, for whatever reason. Also, Telugu fiction doesn’t seem as thriving as several other Indian languages, though I suspect in both Urdu/Dakhni and Telugu there’s still some good works set in Hyderabad that haven’t been translated yet. Still, today there’s so much fiction set all over India, and it’s kind of shocking how little there is set in Hyderabad given the city’s size and stature. I’m not surprised Hyderabad isn’t up there with Mumbai/Delhi/Kolkata, but, like, Shillong has a better literary scene, this is sad.

I did stumble upon the works of the Hyderabad based Urdu (or is it Dakhni?) writer Wajida Tabassum, whose short stories are collected in the English-translated Sin which I really enjoyed. Despite spending a good amount of time searching for fiction set in Hyderabad on Google, Amazon, and Twitter, I never heard of Tabassum, only to come across her short story Utran in the Beyond Charminar collection (it’s her most famous short story but it isn’t included in Sin and I couldn’t find an online version to share in English, but if you can read or understand Urdu you can find it with a google search). Utran has been included in some short compilations in the past (which is how Mira Nair came across it and used it as a jumping off point for the story of her Kama Sutra film), but otherwise none of Tabassum’s work has ever been translated until this collection.

Sin contains 18 stories, many of them more or less about the sexual appetites of Hyderabad’s nawabs, and nearly all which can be read in less than ten minutes each. They are a lot of fun, if this is your sort of thing. There is also a brief but compelling memoir from Tabassum. It’s gloomy but interesting, though I would have liked more depth, which I felt about the stories as well, though I liked them a lot. Wikipedia says she was active as a writer from the 1950s to the 1980s, but I don’t recall the book giving dates of when these stories are from. There are many legends about Tabassum, including that she was the highest paid Urdu writer of her time and that she caused so much outrage that a mob set her publisher’s offices on fire. Are these true? I have no idea. You can skip the bulk of the translator’s note which mostly just summarizes stories and doesn’t give much background or context for the stories and the rest of her work.

How good are these stories? I debated that a lot while reading it. I read them all and found them very entertaining. It’s juicy, smutty stuff, often with good plot twists (though some are predictable). But they are all short, with little depth or detail, and though I do not doubt the sexual depravity of feudal Hyderabad, none of these stories feel real to me. If they were written by a white dude, undoubtedly they’d be dismissed as sick orientalist porno fantasies. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that…) It’s all a bit cartoony. But Tabassum claims she wrote what she saw, I guess I can only take her word for it. 

To be clear, these stories aren’t thaaaat trashy, most are tame by today’s standards, but given the context they are certainly very transgressive. It’s hard to tell what the intent is, because she’s clearly having fun with these dirty little stories, but she also talks about writing from a place of anger and wanting to expose what went on. An article on this collection says “Wajida Tabassum’s 'Sin', a collection of short stories, lifts the hijab of hypocrisy and exposes society’s naked truths.” Maybe it does. But in her time she got criticism for cheap titillation, and that feels true as well. I guess it can be both. It’s nice that it’s both. I wish more stuff was both.

But again, how good are they? I don't have many reference points, but compared to Manto, the only other Urdu story writer I have read, these do not feel as sharp, vivid, hard hitting, or insightful. And the collection is pretty repetitive, though the few stories that went in a different direction from the horny nawabs formula stood out as some of the best. In a sad but touching moment in her memoir, Tabassum responds to the criticism of the repetition of her stories by saying that she would like to write about a greater range of topics, but she is only writing what she knows.

But whatever, I was thoroughly entertained throughout, and they gave me a deeper connection to Hyderabad’s history in a weird way. I kept thinking that these stories would make an amazing movie, not just individually, but collectively, with one film drawing from them all to create a gloriously trashy but beautiful and magical world of sexploitation and petty rivalries, like some Bhansali meets Almodovar Arabian Nights erotic soap opera. If I were a billionaire I’d blow a chunk of my wealth on such a film. I’m bursting with ideas. If anybody wants to hire me to write the script, do reach out. Anyway, recommended, maybe, depends how perverted you are. My wife read a few of them and liked them less than me, but obviously she is wrong and doesn’t have the taste to appreciate Feminist Fiction like I do. 

This was the best review I read, going deeper into the stories, the translation, and the context than any other review I saw, and I am happy that it introduced me to some of the ghazals that Tabassum wrote (sharing the live versions which I loved, but I didn’t like the album versions much). There’s also a video of her performing at a mushaira, fairly interesting to see even though I’m unable to understand it. On a somewhat similar topic, this was an informative read on the zenana girls of Hyderabad.

Aside from that, I think the only other fiction I read set in Hyderabad was in a Telugu short story collection which I discuss in the Telugu section. There are a few other books to mention, though I didn’t read any. 

There’s a “Partition Trilogy” of historical novels focusing on different cities, and the second book is about Hyderabad. Not sure if/when I’d read them, but I think I’d like the trilogy (the first book is based on Lahore, the third on Srinagar). 

The Hyderabad book I’m most curious about is The Eighteenth Parallel, translated from Tamil, by Ashokamitran, an icon of Tamil literature who grew up in Secunderabad. The semi-autobiographical coming of age story was published in 1977 and is set before and after independence. I didn't feel compelled to read it, as I tend to be bored by coming of age stories and I hadn’t heard of the writer, but I've somehow since seen Ashokamitran's name come up numerous times as one of the greats of Tamil literature, so now I'm curious, and the book’s description and its historical period make it sound more interesting than most coming of age stories. I’ll give it a shot one day. 

My Blue Guide to India guidebook recommends Zohra by Zeenuth Futehally, which the description says may be the first English language novel by an Indian woman. Published in 1951, it sounds like an interesting depiction of the pre-independence period and the lives of upper class Muslim families at that time. I thought about getting it, but it’s hard to find, no copies are on Amazon India as of writing this (there’s currently one $20+ used copy available in the US), and it doesn’t sound so exciting that I felt like putting more effort into tracking it down.

Shades of the City is a Hyderabad set short story collection by Baig Ehsas, said in that article to be Hyderabad’s “prince of stories.” Five of the six stories are translated from Urdu. I believe this is Kindle only. It sounds fun, I would like to read it, if my wife ever gives me her Kindle.

Not exactly fiction, but Bibi’s Room: Hyderabadi Women and Twentieth Century Urdu Prose by Nazia Akhtar sounds interesting, but also potentially annoyingly academic (not mutually exclusive, probably both, but that’s okay). Amazon doesn’t have any info (why don’t publishers put more effort in?), but there was a writeup in Scroll: “While the focus of the book is on three writers – Zeenath Sajida, Najma Nikhat, and Jeelani Bano – the author, Nazia Akhtar, deftly weaves into the text the cultural and political history of Hyderabad, crucial questions of identity, a historically contextualised critique of patriarchy, and the ways in which fiction, particularly that emerging from marginalised and oppressed communities/spaces, contributes to historiography… Each of these chapters begins with a representative Urdu text translated into English, followed by a detailed commentary on the chosen piece as well as other works of the writer. Each chapter also includes a brief biography, situating the writer within their historical and cultural context.” I searched for works from the writers featured in here. Bano has a translated short story collection, but good luck finding it. 

Other than that, I hardly saw anything else, and what I did see didn’t call to me. Here’s a Twitter thread with some more recommendations if you’re interested. I hope to update this with more recommendations one day.