HarperCollins to Publish Zeyad Masroor Khan’s Moving Memoir ‘City on Fire’

shabnam.srivastava@harpercollins.co.in | 8 November 2023

presents a heart-rending yet life-affirming memoir of growing up as a Muslim in Aligarh

HarperCollins India is delighted to announce the upcoming publication of Zeyad Masroor Khan’s memoir, City on Fire, which is a story of our times, one that needed to be written and is calling out to be read, because it bears poignant testimony not just to our current context, in all its complexity, but also lays bare the violence enmeshed in it.

Zeyad Masroor Khan says, ‘In this book, I have tried to interpret this paradox, my childhood, my complicated relationship with my father, my city, and my tryst with the religious hate I grew up seeing. This book is a medley of these reflections, my personal history and memories of the violence, and how the Aligarh of the post-Babri riots offer us a window to look at the religious hate presently suffocating our country like a python.

While it dares to tread serious territory with some humour, I hope that it will make the reader realise how impressionable our childhoods are, even as it offers one a window into the everyday life of millions of Indians who live in Muslim ghettos, a perspective that no statistical data and long analytical pieces on tolerance will ever give. And probably, just maybe, it will answer the burning question of the hour: why does hate thrive in the hearts of so many of us?’

Bushra Ahmed, Sr. Commissioning Editor – HarperCollins India, says, “As an editor, I knew straightaway that Zeyad’s story needs to be told. City on Fire is an important book for our times, and an immensely personal story at that – in a way this is also perhaps the story and a microcosmic living history of our country. I am convinced this book will make the reader think hard and raise many questions, as well as give some hard-hitting answers.”

About City on Fire

Zeyad Masroor Khan was four years old when he realized that an innocent act of clicking a switch near a window overlooking the street could trigger a riot. As the distant thud of a crowd grew closer and calls for murder rented the air, he got his first taste of growing up in Upar Kot, a Muslim ghetto in Aligarh. Khan’s world was far-removed from the Aligarh of popular imagination—of poets, tehzeeb and the intellectual corridors of the Aligarh Muslim University. His was a city where serpentine lanes simmered with violence, homes fervently prayed to dispel the omnipresent fear of a family member turning up dead, and the soft breeze that blew over crowded terraces carried rumours of a bloodthirsty mob on the prowl.

In his coming-of-age memoir, Khan writes, with searing honesty and raw power, about the undercurrents of religious violence and the ensuing ‘othering’ that followed him everywhere he went. From his schoolgoing days in Aligarh, when hopping over to the lending library to the ‘Hindu’ part of town to find his favourite comic book or lighting candles with neighbours on Diwali were fraught with tension; through his years as a college student in Delhi, where being denied apartments because of his name was the norm; to ultimately becoming a journalist documenting history of his country as it happened.

City on Fire is a rare, visceral portrait of how everyday violence and hate become a part of our lives and consciousness; a society where name and clothes mark out a person as the ‘other’. It is as much an incisive examination of religion and violence, imagined histories and fractured realities, grief and love in today’s India, as it is a paean to the hope of continued unity, to an idea of India.

Advance Praise 

‘This book is as much an autobiography as a biography of Aligarh, seen through the eyes of a local Muslim, born and raised there. No one else could have told us more effectively what it means to live in a ghetto—and even what a ghetto is—and to experience communal violence as a minority (not only at the time of physical encounters, but routinely and symbolically). While the style is most accessible, this is a social science book.’ —Christophe Jaffrelot, political scientist and author of Modi’s India

‘A gripping and poignant memoir by an astonishing new talent, City on Fire transcends the boundaries of a single city, inviting readers to contemplate the broader implications of division. This is a courageous and beautifully written memoir that I’d urge everyone to read.’ —Sonia Faleiro, author of The Good Girls

‘A thoughtful and invigorating memoir, which functions as both a fascinating personal history and a window onto modern-day India.’ —Isaac Chotiner, staff writer at The New Yorker

‘City on Fire is a compelling commentary, on a locality, a city and ultimately the country.’ —Rana Safvi, historian and author of The Forgotten Cities of Delhi

About the Author 

Zeyad Masroor Khan is a journalist, writer and documentary film-maker based in New Delhi. In his decade-long journalistic career, he has worked with national and international media companies like Reuters, Vice, Brut and Deccan Herald. A South Asia Speaks fellow, he primarily writes on politics, marginalized communities, crime and culture. Three of his documentaries have been screened at international film festivals. City on Fire: A Boyhood in Aligarh is his first book.

For more information, please write to – Shabnam.srivastava@harpercollins.co.in