"A bold and glorious book about humans, cities and the wild lives of the beings—from fireflies to rivers—with whom we share the habitats we have built. It is brilliantly crafted at the level of the sentence and image, adventurous in its forms and tones, and its themes—memory, love, loss, care, value—are as embracing and urgent as they come. It’s magnificent."
—Robert Macfarlane, author of Is a River Alive?

When is the last time you ran your hands through the tumult of wild grass flowers? Or stopped to watch a firefly? In a warming, hostile world, how do we find purpose? Perhaps we can start with noticing the bird outside one's window?

In My Wild City, acclaimed nature writer Neha Sinha takes us on an unforgettable journey through the hidden wildernesses of the bustling metropolis of Delhi, where she finds wild creatures, ecological histories and a deep sense of meaning that bind us to the places we call our own.

Exploring the city over many days and nights, Sinha traces memories and the stories of extraordinary human lives, discovering centuries-old groves of trees and neglected rivers, mammal tracks and bird calls, words forgotten and then re-found.

The result is a deeply personal yet universal book which reveals how we can find our way in the world through the exploration of natural places-and presents a manifesto of hope through the rediscovery of nature.

“Brilliant and nuanced explorations of curiosity and belonging. . . [Neha Sinha's] boundless and inspiring enthusiasm for discovery bring into vivid focus the joys and heartbreaks of opening all our senses to the living world.”
—David George Haskell, biologist and two-time Pulitzer-finalist author of How Flowers Made our World

About The Author

Neha Sinha is a conservation biologist and an acclaimed author. With over a decade of wildlife conservation work under her belt, Neha is on a lifelong mission to make the joys and challenges of nature accessible to everyone, and to re-look at the ordinary through a new lens. 

Trained in conservation at Oxford University and in literature at St. Stephen’s College in Delhi, Neha combines the rigours of conservation science with compelling literary flair. She is the author of Wild and Wilful: Tales of Fifteen Iconic Indian Species, published by HarperCollins in 2011. She has received awards for both her conservation work as well as her writing and is often found wandering in places looking for birds and the perfect words to describe them. She lives in Delhi, works at WWF India, and is deeply partial to animals considered "ugly."