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She was India's first international superstar in the 1930s and 1940s. Astonishingly beautiful, prodigiously talented and a great-grandniece of Rabindranath Tagore, Devika Rani earned rave reviews for her first film, Karma. Shortly afterwards, she married Himansu Rai, and together they set up India's first truly professional studio, Bombay Talkies. Over the next few years, the studio became the launch pad for some of India's best-known talent, including Ashok Kumar, Leela Chitnis and Dilip Kumar. After Himansu's controversial death in 1940, Devika took over Bombay Talkies. She ran the studio with a steel hand, squashing all rebellion and constantly walking a tightrope when it came to the men around her. Then, one day, she met the handsome and reclusive Svetoslav Roerich, and, just like in a Hindi film, nothing was ever the same again. Devika died as she had lived, in the midst of controversy, and an enigma to most.

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Kishwar Desai is an award-winning author and playwright, who writes both fiction and non-fiction. She worked in television as an anchor and producer for more than twenty years before becoming a writer. She is the chairperson of the Arts and Cultural Heritage Trust, which set up the world's first Partition Museum at Town Hall, Amritsar. She also helped to install the statue of Mahatma Gandhi outside Westminster in the UK. Desai is the author of Darlingji: The True Love Story of Nargis and Sunil Dutt(2007). Her novel Witness the Night won the Costa First Novel Award in the UK, in 2010, and was followed by two others: Origins of Love (2012) and Sea of Innocence (2013). The trilogy featuring Simran Singh has since been optioned for a web series.

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