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Our City That Year: The International Booker Prize-Winning Author's Powerful and Uncompromising Fiction
From the International Booker Prize-winning author-translator duo of Tomb of Sand, a powerful, kaleidoscopic novel about a fractured society, loosely based on the gathering violence that led to the demolition of the Babri Mosque by religious extremists in 1992.
“That year, in our city, Hindus abandoned their pacifism. We’ve run out of other cheeks to turn, they proclaimed. We’re helpless! they screamed. They climbed atop mosques and waved the flag of Devi from the prongs of tridents proclaiming, What was done to us will be visited on them! Wrong shall be answered with wrong!”
In an unnamed city in India, violence is erupting between Hindus and Muslims, each side viewing the other with suspicion, rage, and blame. As their identities sharpen, friends and colleagues turn against each other. Hospital beds fill up and classrooms empty out. Curfews are imposed. Residents flee en masse.
Three intellectuals find themselves paralyzed by anxiety and fear. Shruti, a creative writer, spends her time writing and rewriting the same sentence. Hanif is sidelined by his academic department for his own beliefs. And Sharad finds it increasingly difficult to connect with Hanif, his childhood friend. The only one left to bear witness is the novel’s unnamed narrator, who hurries to transcribe everything that’s happening.
Explosive, raw, and uncompromising, Our City That Year unfolds in a time of rising uncertainty and dread, when nothing will go back to being as it was before. Twenty-five years after its original publication in Hindi, Shree’s clarion call to bear witness to the toxic ideology of religious nationalism is timelier than ever, speaking to the growing divisions across global borders.
Translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell
“That year, in our city, Hindus abandoned their pacifism. We’ve run out of other cheeks to turn, they proclaimed. We’re helpless! they screamed. They climbed atop mosques and waved the flag of Devi from the prongs of tridents proclaiming, What was done to us will be visited on them! Wrong shall be answered with wrong!”
In an unnamed city in India, violence is erupting between Hindus and Muslims, each side viewing the other with suspicion, rage, and blame. As their identities sharpen, friends and colleagues turn against each other. Hospital beds fill up and classrooms empty out. Curfews are imposed. Residents flee en masse.
Three intellectuals find themselves paralyzed by anxiety and fear. Shruti, a creative writer, spends her time writing and rewriting the same sentence. Hanif is sidelined by his academic department for his own beliefs. And Sharad finds it increasingly difficult to connect with Hanif, his childhood friend. The only one left to bear witness is the novel’s unnamed narrator, who hurries to transcribe everything that’s happening.
Explosive, raw, and uncompromising, Our City That Year unfolds in a time of rising uncertainty and dread, when nothing will go back to being as it was before. Twenty-five years after its original publication in Hindi, Shree’s clarion call to bear witness to the toxic ideology of religious nationalism is timelier than ever, speaking to the growing divisions across global borders.
Translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell
431 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1998
20 people are currently reading
598 people want to read
About the author
Geetanjali Shree
18 books250 followersGeetanjali Shree गीताजंली क्ष्री (She was known as Geentanjali Pandey, and she took her mother's first name Shree as her last name) (born 1957) is a Hindi novelist and short story writer based in New Delhi, India. She is the author of several short stories and three novels. Mai was short listed for the Crossword Book Award in 2001. She has also written a critical work on Premchand.
Her first story, Bel Patra (1987) was published in the literary magazine Hans and was followed by a collection of short stories Anugoonj (1991)
The English translation of her novel Mai catapulted her into fame. The novel is about three generations of women and the men around them, in a North Indian middle-class family. Mai is translated into Serbian, Korean and German. It has been translated into English by Nita Kumar, who was awarded the Sahitya Akademi award for the translation. It has been also translated into Urdu by Bashir Unwan with preface by Intizar Hussain. Furthermore, it has been translated into other languages: into French by Annie Montaut, into German by Reinhold Schein...
Her second novel Hamara Shahar Us Baras set loosely after the incidents of Babri Masjid demolition.
Her first story, Bel Patra (1987) was published in the literary magazine Hans and was followed by a collection of short stories Anugoonj (1991)
The English translation of her novel Mai catapulted her into fame. The novel is about three generations of women and the men around them, in a North Indian middle-class family. Mai is translated into Serbian, Korean and German. It has been translated into English by Nita Kumar, who was awarded the Sahitya Akademi award for the translation. It has been also translated into Urdu by Bashir Unwan with preface by Intizar Hussain. Furthermore, it has been translated into other languages: into French by Annie Montaut, into German by Reinhold Schein...
Her second novel Hamara Shahar Us Baras set loosely after the incidents of Babri Masjid demolition.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 18, 2024
The story told by an unnamed narrator unfolds in episodic form chronicling the escalation of communal violence and the charged atmosphere it breeds among college students and educators. The sociology department of a university situated next to an ashram where right-wing fervour reaches fever pitch becomes a poignant backdrop to the tale.
At the center are three close friends- Sharad and Hanif, both academics and Shruti, a writer married to Hanif. Sharad’s father, Daddu completes this intellectual circle representing the ‘liberal us’ as they strive to maintain their values in a city divided by rising hostility. The symbolism of a shared mosque-temple and a bridge that splits the community into 'us' and 'them' reinforces the book's themes of fractured identity and ideological conflict.
The novel captures the shift from passive acceptance to aggressive nationalism, reflecting the personal and collective turmoil that follows. Overall, it is a powerful, timely reflection on the consequences of extremist ideologies, illustrating how they fracture societies and impact personal bonds.
At the center are three close friends- Sharad and Hanif, both academics and Shruti, a writer married to Hanif. Sharad’s father, Daddu completes this intellectual circle representing the ‘liberal us’ as they strive to maintain their values in a city divided by rising hostility. The symbolism of a shared mosque-temple and a bridge that splits the community into 'us' and 'them' reinforces the book's themes of fractured identity and ideological conflict.
The novel captures the shift from passive acceptance to aggressive nationalism, reflecting the personal and collective turmoil that follows. Overall, it is a powerful, timely reflection on the consequences of extremist ideologies, illustrating how they fracture societies and impact personal bonds.
January 26, 2025
Geetanjali Shree's Our City, That Year, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell (who never misses her mark), was actually written before her International Booker Prize winning Tomb Of Sand, but translated after. I'm not sure if this book is something only critics like or if I'm just too slow, but I struggled to get through it. By Rockwell's own admission, Tomb Of Sand is a more complex book; I, however, found Our City a tedious and unweilding read.
A lot of the language is impactful, but I couldn't connect with any of the characters and was generally left quite underwhelmed.
A lot of the language is impactful, but I couldn't connect with any of the characters and was generally left quite underwhelmed.
April 11, 2022
This is a book in Hindi that every Indian, whichever language they speak, must read, hence the review is in English.
A time of uncertainty and dread, a time when all the old, tried and tested ways of living are getting kicked aside; religious madness is mainstreamed, how can such a time be captured in the life of a city? In the lives of people affected by it? In the sounds and sights and conversations that flood consciousness from the moment one gets up to the moment one falls exhausted in a nightmare-riddled sleep?
Geetanjali Shree's "Hamar Shahar Us baras" is a masterly, searing literary experiment that captures the insanity of our times through the device of an unnamed narrator who, throughout the narrative, binds bits and fragments she reports upon, with a deprecatory twine of insistence that she is not a writer—only someone well-versed in copying down anyhow, howsoever, all that she is hearing and seeing.
All three protagonists are trying to write about these very things. They know there is no point in being silent, that they need to speak up and say it all.
The professional writer, Shruti remains stuck over one line—that year something happened.. in our city—and after rearranging its words from time to time, puts it aside to write something that makes more sense, like, a romantic story. The two intellectuals and close friends—Sharad and Hanif—who work in the University's unnamed department (where academic politics begins to find use in the reigning rhetoric to sideline Hanif who gets invited to too many foreign seminars); get waylaid by the triteness of what they want to say.
"All these are cut and dried things. what's the point of writing them? They have been soundly negated, are as meaningless as Government slogans..."
So it is left to our ordinary narrator with none of these exalted qualifications, to write.
Through this creative masterstroke, Geetanjali accomplishes multiple things: fleshes out the quality of the paralytic silence that grips the liberal-intellectual, points writers towards their first duty as witnesses, takes a dig at the effete intellectualism of the "real" writers and intellectuals; and crafts a unique breathless, fragmented narrative-style that mimics the external situation of the city—the growing anxiety and dread cast by the toxic, belligerent, right-wing religious assertion.
In this story, the city spreads on two sides of a ditch. The three-storied rented-house of the protagonists (with an endearing daddu at the helm who jokes and tells of the days long back), looks over a vast playground. On one side of this ground is the University with its elegant domes and jaali-work corridors and on the other edge, lies a small Jagdambe math almost obscured by ber trees.
That year, the math emerges from the shrubbery—first with the saffron flag on top, then a mela, a loudspeaker that gets louder. Chants. Slogans. The math marches over the playground. Curfews.
Hanif and Shruti try to grow malati in their balcony. The wind gets drier, hotter, full of grit. Conjunctivitis spreads. People can't see things. Then comes Jaundice. One community is blamed. The loudspeakers get louder. All that is written and said is ridiculous. The protagonists debate, get angry, make-up. The math keeps marching.
Our narrator just goes on transcribing everything down.
If to be an Artist is to recreate the experience of eating, laughing, chatting—living "normally" —through the fug of a terrible reality steeping us, corrupting and poisoning all that is life-giving; then this book accomplishes the task in a way few have ever done before.
Please Read.
A time of uncertainty and dread, a time when all the old, tried and tested ways of living are getting kicked aside; religious madness is mainstreamed, how can such a time be captured in the life of a city? In the lives of people affected by it? In the sounds and sights and conversations that flood consciousness from the moment one gets up to the moment one falls exhausted in a nightmare-riddled sleep?
Geetanjali Shree's "Hamar Shahar Us baras" is a masterly, searing literary experiment that captures the insanity of our times through the device of an unnamed narrator who, throughout the narrative, binds bits and fragments she reports upon, with a deprecatory twine of insistence that she is not a writer—only someone well-versed in copying down anyhow, howsoever, all that she is hearing and seeing.
All three protagonists are trying to write about these very things. They know there is no point in being silent, that they need to speak up and say it all.
The professional writer, Shruti remains stuck over one line—that year something happened.. in our city—and after rearranging its words from time to time, puts it aside to write something that makes more sense, like, a romantic story. The two intellectuals and close friends—Sharad and Hanif—who work in the University's unnamed department (where academic politics begins to find use in the reigning rhetoric to sideline Hanif who gets invited to too many foreign seminars); get waylaid by the triteness of what they want to say.
"All these are cut and dried things. what's the point of writing them? They have been soundly negated, are as meaningless as Government slogans..."
So it is left to our ordinary narrator with none of these exalted qualifications, to write.
Through this creative masterstroke, Geetanjali accomplishes multiple things: fleshes out the quality of the paralytic silence that grips the liberal-intellectual, points writers towards their first duty as witnesses, takes a dig at the effete intellectualism of the "real" writers and intellectuals; and crafts a unique breathless, fragmented narrative-style that mimics the external situation of the city—the growing anxiety and dread cast by the toxic, belligerent, right-wing religious assertion.
In this story, the city spreads on two sides of a ditch. The three-storied rented-house of the protagonists (with an endearing daddu at the helm who jokes and tells of the days long back), looks over a vast playground. On one side of this ground is the University with its elegant domes and jaali-work corridors and on the other edge, lies a small Jagdambe math almost obscured by ber trees.
That year, the math emerges from the shrubbery—first with the saffron flag on top, then a mela, a loudspeaker that gets louder. Chants. Slogans. The math marches over the playground. Curfews.
Hanif and Shruti try to grow malati in their balcony. The wind gets drier, hotter, full of grit. Conjunctivitis spreads. People can't see things. Then comes Jaundice. One community is blamed. The loudspeakers get louder. All that is written and said is ridiculous. The protagonists debate, get angry, make-up. The math keeps marching.
Our narrator just goes on transcribing everything down.
If to be an Artist is to recreate the experience of eating, laughing, chatting—living "normally" —through the fug of a terrible reality steeping us, corrupting and poisoning all that is life-giving; then this book accomplishes the task in a way few have ever done before.
Please Read.
April 5, 2025
Originally published in Hindi in 1998, several years after the Hindu nationalists’ December 1992 destruction of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, Indian novelist Geetanjali Shree’s Our City That Year has finally been published in English for American readers. With Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Modi’s recent joining of President Trump’s Truth Social platform, this seems like a timely publication.
Shree’s novel portrays the growth of Hindu nationalist sentiment by focusing largely on three intellectuals: Shruti, a Hindu writer; her husband Hanif, a Muslim university professor and scholar; and Hanif’s departmental colleague Sharad, a Hindu. Each of the three considers herself or himself an open-minded, liberal thinker. A river separates their home, the university, and a Hindu ashram from the growing troubles on the river’s other side.
While the lives of these three, along with lesser characters such as Shruti’s aging father, Hanif and Sharad’s department head, and the local head of police, go about their daily lives, an unnamed narrator commits to recording what is happening not only in these people’s daily lives but also in the increasingly violent outside world. Worried about running out of ink, the narrator frantically records their conversations, lectures, departmental debates about who will become the next department head, classroom lectures, loudspeaker announcements from the ashram, newspaper reports and editorials, and the outside world’s escalating Hindu-Muslim vandalism, beatings, bombings, and more.
Questions soon begin to arise. Is there really a separate “inside” world for the likes of Shruti, Hanif, and Sharad where they can go about their lives as usual, or is the outside destined to become the inside, the inside to become the outside? Can Shruti, Hanif, and Sharad remain a separate category of secular intellectuals as they regard themselves, or are they all just Hindus and Muslims? Was their city that year determined to divide everything and everyone? If a belief or opinion is repeated often enough, does it become the truth?
Some online background reading will help American readers better understand the historical events that inspired Shree’s novel. Kindle’s built-in dictionary also helped me translate the occasional Indian terms, but a search engine should easily do the job for readers of print editions.
Thanks to NetGalley and HarperVia for an advance reader egalley of this highly recommended new English translation of Geetanjali Shree’s Our City That Year.
Shree’s novel portrays the growth of Hindu nationalist sentiment by focusing largely on three intellectuals: Shruti, a Hindu writer; her husband Hanif, a Muslim university professor and scholar; and Hanif’s departmental colleague Sharad, a Hindu. Each of the three considers herself or himself an open-minded, liberal thinker. A river separates their home, the university, and a Hindu ashram from the growing troubles on the river’s other side.
While the lives of these three, along with lesser characters such as Shruti’s aging father, Hanif and Sharad’s department head, and the local head of police, go about their daily lives, an unnamed narrator commits to recording what is happening not only in these people’s daily lives but also in the increasingly violent outside world. Worried about running out of ink, the narrator frantically records their conversations, lectures, departmental debates about who will become the next department head, classroom lectures, loudspeaker announcements from the ashram, newspaper reports and editorials, and the outside world’s escalating Hindu-Muslim vandalism, beatings, bombings, and more.
Questions soon begin to arise. Is there really a separate “inside” world for the likes of Shruti, Hanif, and Sharad where they can go about their lives as usual, or is the outside destined to become the inside, the inside to become the outside? Can Shruti, Hanif, and Sharad remain a separate category of secular intellectuals as they regard themselves, or are they all just Hindus and Muslims? Was their city that year determined to divide everything and everyone? If a belief or opinion is repeated often enough, does it become the truth?
Some online background reading will help American readers better understand the historical events that inspired Shree’s novel. Kindle’s built-in dictionary also helped me translate the occasional Indian terms, but a search engine should easily do the job for readers of print editions.
Thanks to NetGalley and HarperVia for an advance reader egalley of this highly recommended new English translation of Geetanjali Shree’s Our City That Year.
July 14, 2025
How do you tell the story of something as delicate, as public and as personal as life in a communally charged city? How do you tackle a reality that most Indians have witnessed, and continue to witness and render it in a fictional story in a way that honours each one of the characters, minority and majority like?
हमारा शहर उस बरस is the story of two childhood buddies-colleagues-housemates, both academics, liberal historians, Haneef and Sharad, a Muslim and a Hindu, both something other than their religions, teesri jamaat as they call themselves, the third category. What does a city engulfed in the fire of communal hatred do to such a friendship? When does one friend cease to be a friend and become a symbol of his religion? When did he change? Did he change? Or did the other friend’s lens of seeing him change?
Geetanjali Shree shows us. In her unique style, which is nothing short of a masterclass in fiction writing, she brings into focus that which is ineffable, considers it from the eyes of all her characters and renders a mosaic on paper. She does it without judgement, with jaw dropping honesty and her signature humour. Yes, even in this fraught and fragile tale, there’s not a page without joy, without the fragrance of madhumalti, the delight of spotting a फुलचुही , flower pecker, Daddu’s laughter or a tangential qissa from Haneef’s infinite collection of fables. The writer disappears and becomes part of the story, a mere scribe, trying to record every conversation, thought and dream of these characters, often not able to keep up. At times her ink runs out but there’s a curfew in the city, but her characters won’t stop talking and some important bits go untold. At times the angry air dries her ink. The reader feels the heat. To read this book is to live this story, this city, that year.
Written in 1998, while it is a story about Bombay in 1992, it is a story of all times, everywhere. If anything, it more relevant today on an international level.
English translation by the incredible Daisy Rockwell, Our City, That Year came out last year.
It’s only July and I’ve already read the finest book I will read this year!
हमारा शहर उस बरस is the story of two childhood buddies-colleagues-housemates, both academics, liberal historians, Haneef and Sharad, a Muslim and a Hindu, both something other than their religions, teesri jamaat as they call themselves, the third category. What does a city engulfed in the fire of communal hatred do to such a friendship? When does one friend cease to be a friend and become a symbol of his religion? When did he change? Did he change? Or did the other friend’s lens of seeing him change?
Geetanjali Shree shows us. In her unique style, which is nothing short of a masterclass in fiction writing, she brings into focus that which is ineffable, considers it from the eyes of all her characters and renders a mosaic on paper. She does it without judgement, with jaw dropping honesty and her signature humour. Yes, even in this fraught and fragile tale, there’s not a page without joy, without the fragrance of madhumalti, the delight of spotting a फुलचुही , flower pecker, Daddu’s laughter or a tangential qissa from Haneef’s infinite collection of fables. The writer disappears and becomes part of the story, a mere scribe, trying to record every conversation, thought and dream of these characters, often not able to keep up. At times her ink runs out but there’s a curfew in the city, but her characters won’t stop talking and some important bits go untold. At times the angry air dries her ink. The reader feels the heat. To read this book is to live this story, this city, that year.
Written in 1998, while it is a story about Bombay in 1992, it is a story of all times, everywhere. If anything, it more relevant today on an international level.
English translation by the incredible Daisy Rockwell, Our City, That Year came out last year.
It’s only July and I’ve already read the finest book I will read this year!
February 19, 2023
A book written in past about the past, but shows now as if making us question ourselves if it had been like this always, or the past has jumped to the present, or the past has a hobby to jump to the present in the same shape like this or time takes a break at times to wear the same cloth and shows it is how it is, when people lose oblivion, when they put themselves in boundaries, building edges, and indicating their shapes.
As Geetanjali Shree has said, it is 'hawa', but this 'hawa' is free of time and space, it confines itself in the cave free of both, and after a duration, covers the sky, stays until it is gone the way it came, but the question is if it will go as it came and if it will ever go.
As Geetanjali Shree has said, it is 'hawa', but this 'hawa' is free of time and space, it confines itself in the cave free of both, and after a duration, covers the sky, stays until it is gone the way it came, but the question is if it will go as it came and if it will ever go.
November 11, 2025
Our City That Year by Geetanjali Shree is a stunning, unsettling, and deeply humane novel. Set in a city unraveling under communal tension, it captures fear, silence, and resistance with haunting precision. Shree’s prose, translated beautifully by Daisy Rockwell, is spare yet lyrical, full of pauses and half-sentences that mirror the chaos of the times.
What makes the book unforgettable is its blend of urgency and tenderness. Amid curfews and rumours, there are still moments of humour, love, and reflection. Though rooted in India, its themes feel universal and heartbreakingly relevant. A powerful, essential read that stays with you long after the last page.
What makes the book unforgettable is its blend of urgency and tenderness. Amid curfews and rumours, there are still moments of humour, love, and reflection. Though rooted in India, its themes feel universal and heartbreakingly relevant. A powerful, essential read that stays with you long after the last page.
Read
April 24, 2025I received an advance copy of this novel a while back, and I was very interested in it because it was published in 1997, but a lot of the Muslim vs. Hindu divide in India described in it is still happening today. I liked this novel, but my two cents is that it might be a little long, but that was something I also said about Shree's other work in English.
full review is on my blog: https://www.ashleyhajimirsadeghi.com/...
full review is on my blog: https://www.ashleyhajimirsadeghi.com/...
March 31, 2025
I wish my Hindi reading skills were a bit better so I could compare with the original. Rockwell’s version captures the structure of Hindi, but something still gets lost in translation - the book felt about 20% too long and covers well-worn themes about secularism and intellectuals’ place in contemporary India.
November 15, 2025
A great and challenging and tricksy book about interfaith violence in India. Shree’s prose is elusive and slippery, which at first baffled and confused me but then started to feel central to the point of the story. Likely one to revisit in the future. This is giving me confidence to take another swing at TOMB OF SAND.
February 28, 2025
really well-written book that felt very important to read. the themes are very applicable to all sorts of scenarios. as an Indian, this is awesome. 5 stars. tysm for the arc.
April 13, 2025
3.25🌟
The episodic style is both confusing but understandable at the same time, idk how else to describe it.
The episodic style is both confusing but understandable at the same time, idk how else to describe it.
June 10, 2025
Worthy topic, but very repetitive.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews