Overview

A compelling story of deal-making, missed opportunities, hope and tragedy. At midnight on 14 August 1947, Britain's 350-year-old Indian Empire was broken into three pieces. The greatest mass migration in history began, as Muslims fled north and Hindus fled south, and Britain's role as an imperial power came to an end. Patrick French's vivid and surprising account of the chaotic final years of colonial rule in India has been acclaimed as the definitive book on this subject. Journeying across India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, he brings to life a cast of characters including spies, idealists, freedom fighters and politicians from Churchill to Gandhi.

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9780241950401

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Reviews

A remarkable achievement ... a huge, crowded and kaleidoscopic canvas, which the author handles with remarkable authority ... It is also enormous fun to read Daily Telegraph A fine, lucid book ... vividly drawn with novel-like touches -- Hanif Kureshi Beautifully written Sunday Times French is a natural storyteller ... a delightful tale of intrigue, ham-handedness and just plain blundering India Today

A remarkable achievement ... a huge, crowded and kaleidoscopic canvas, which the author handles with remarkable authority ... It is also enormous fun to read Daily Telegraph A fine, lucid book ... vividly drawn with novel-like touches -- Hanif Kureshi Beautifully written Sunday Times French is a natural storyteller ... a delightful tale of intrigue, ham-handedness and just plain blundering India Today

French is a natural storyteller ... a delightful tale of intrigue, ham-handedness and just plain blundering * India Today * Beautifully written * Sunday Times * A fine, lucid book ... vividly drawn with novel-like touches -- Hanif Kureshi A remarkable achievement ... a huge, crowded and kaleidoscopic canvas, which the author handles with remarkable authority ... It is also enormous fun to read * Daily Telegraph *

Author Information

Patrick French is a writer and historian, born in England in 1966. He is the author of Younghusband- The Last Great Imperial Adventurer, which won the Somerset Maugham Award and the Royal Society of Literature W. H. Heinemann Prize, Liberty or Death- India's Journey to Independence and Division , which won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, Tibet, Tibet- A Personal History of a Lost Land and, most recently, The World Is What It Is- The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul, which was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Hawthornden Prize.

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