White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in 18th-century India

From the reviews:

‘The most touching love story to have come out of India since Shah Jehan and Begum Mumtaz, whose death inspired the Taj Mahal … It is far more romantic than any work of fiction could be, and more tragic in its outcome, with a final twist guaranteed to make the eyes dazzle. Dalrymple is the most perceptive and sympathetic observer of the Asian scene writing today, and for the Indophile, the lover of romance and the lover of the written word, White Mughals is nothing less than a kush bagh, a garden of delights …’

CHARLES ALLEN, Literary Review

‘Love and war are usually thought to inhabit different spheres and, except in Tolstoy, we do not expect them to mix. Part of the achievement of this magnificent book is the way William Dalrymple effortlessly melds the two motifs so that the public story of the British conquest of India and the poignant tale of a love affair interpenetrate, with each adding a dimension to the other. Much of Dalrymple’s narrative has the pace of a thriller … [but] above all this book is a bravura display of scholarship, writing and insight. No brief review can do justice to its manifold excellence and all one can say is that Dalrymple manages the incredible feat of outpointing most historians and novelists in one go’

FRANK MCLYNN, Independent on Sunday

‘William Dalrymple’s story of a colonial love affair will change our views about British India’

MIRANDA SEYMOUR, Sunday Times

‘Imaginatively conceived, beautifully written, intellectually challenging and a passionate love story – this is Dalrymple’s lifetime achievement and the best book he has ever written. He has done for India and the British what Edward Said did for the meeting between the West and the Arab world in Orientalism. Despite its setting in the eighteenth century, this is a hugely important contemporary book. Dalrymple has broken new ground in the current debate about racism, colonialism and globalisation. The history of the British in India will never be the same after this book’

AHMED RASHID

‘Moving, wide-ranging and richly textured … Through massive research blessed with serendipity, and through imagination and empathy, Dalrymple has evoked the world of the British in late-eighteenth-century India as no one has before … A wonderful book, a story of love and the humanity we share’

FRANCIS ROBINSON, Times Literary Supplement

‘Anyone who fails to read William Dalrymple’s White Mughals owing to a lack of interest in India, will be losing a rich reward. By following the love story of a British Resident in Hyderabad and a Muslim noblewoman, he goes deep into the relationship of East and West in the late eighteenth century when the twain did most certainly meet. A devoted and – in this case – uncannily lucky researcher, Dalrymple offers a feast of often astonishing information and a cast of men and women ranging from the comic to the heart-rending, but above all he writes in a way that draws you into his own enthusiasm for the subject. This is an irresistible book’

DIANA ATHILL, Guardian Books of the Year

‘Dalrymple’s subject is the unlovely term “transculturation”, but his book has some lovely stuff about race, diplomacy, warfare and, especially, sex … A witches’ brew of deviousness, desire, ambition and astonishment’

ROBIN BLAKE, Financial Times

‘A masterpiece’

New Statesman Books of the Year

‘Technically ambitious … There is a scholarly seriousness here; also a moral passion. This capacious book is never more engaging than when Dalrymple describes, with a novelist’s compassion, the tragic costs of Kirkpatrick’s rebellion’