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3.89 AVERAGE
3.89 AVERAGE
Described as a love story - more accurately a historical account of the British in India for the 1700/1800s with a discussion of the British marrying Indian/Persian women associated with Islam. Interesting, but quite a slog due to all the historical information - dates and titles etc.
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Probably one of the best books I've read this year. It's a very interesting look at cross cultural interaction between India and Europe before the British and the East India Company ruined everything, as well as a very beautiful and tragic love story between Khair un-Nissa and James Kirkpatrick. It was a little dense and slow going at times but overall really got me invested.
This book is less of a love story and more of how the East and West lived as one in the pre-Mutiny world, true to its name. There is a great deal of research done to unearth the stories and dots to be connected in this book, all the tone of the book is as a matter of fact, doesn't glorify any position and is hence very welcome.
Read this for a glimpse on how life was, back when East India Company was just a business organization, and the lavish life lived by the Mughals and Nizams!
Read this for a glimpse on how life was, back when East India Company was just a business organization, and the lavish life lived by the Mughals and Nizams!
Dalrymple reconstructs a lost world. An extraordinary act of historical reimagining, and a poignant plea for greater cross-cultural understanding.
Brilliant. It is often said that truth is stranger than fiction. In this case, the truth, this engrossing historical account of a Hyderabadi Begum and her British colonial husband, and the [extensive:] intermingling between the British and the Indians, is also much more interesting and compelling than any fictional novel could be. Dalrymple is an engaging writer and clearly a thorough historian. I can't wait to read his other books.
Now I know why I always loved history in school...Still do...It seems I have run a marathon... This book, which took almost two months to read is one of the best tales of historical romance, of the intermingling of societies, cultures, religions etc.
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In this age of the internet, it's very hard to imagine how in that period (the late 18th and early 19th centuries), letters were written - which took days to deliver and which are a surviving proof as to that era gone by
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How William Dalrymple pieced together the history from those letters and made this story is truly remarkable, no mean feat!
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There are those missing periods in the book when either letters weren't written or haven't survived, which makes you wonder what may have happened with or to the characters lending a certain suspense and overall charm to the book
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For those who are yet to read the book, do read it along with the notes provided at the end as you may get to add certain books to your reading list from the bibliography!
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In this age of the internet, it's very hard to imagine how in that period (the late 18th and early 19th centuries), letters were written - which took days to deliver and which are a surviving proof as to that era gone by
.
How William Dalrymple pieced together the history from those letters and made this story is truly remarkable, no mean feat!
.
There are those missing periods in the book when either letters weren't written or haven't survived, which makes you wonder what may have happened with or to the characters lending a certain suspense and overall charm to the book
.
For those who are yet to read the book, do read it along with the notes provided at the end as you may get to add certain books to your reading list from the bibliography!
challenging
informative
slow-paced
I couldn't fully buy into the romance because of Khair's age (call it my modern morality clashing w the morality of the times). Still questioning whether she really opted into the marriage as a political move or if it was more coerced than made out to be. Regardless, loved the richness of the descriptions and learning about the Mughal-Hyderabad relations, which I've never read about before.
Once more, William Dalrymple exhibits superior storytelling skills in his history of a Muslim-British romance towards the end of the 18th century in British India. The couple James Achilles Kirkpatrick and his wife, Khair, defy the conventions of both cultures to pursue an intense, romantic life together that is nevertheless marred by tragedy and early death on the part of nearly everyone involved. If this sounds a bit like a soap opera, that is because it in many ways is just that. And it's typical Dalrymple, with his own ancestors entering the narration at several points. This is "great man" history at its best.
Yet it overlooks so much. It begs the question: what was happening to all those people living beneath the exquisite lifestyles of British lords and noble born Muslim Begums? You want find even a hint of an answer in Dalrymple's books. Of course, you cannot criticize him for a book he didn't write--about the fate of the classes not so ennobled. It's just that he seems so completely unaware. Could it be because Dalrymple is himself of such a social standing that he really cannot comprehend what his books so often omit?
As much as I enjoy reading these Dalrymple histories for the good and valuable timelines and personalities they present, I always feel that I've gorged on sweets rather than a nutritious dinner. And with White Mughals, I must say that Dalrymple is at his apex. This is the Harlequin Romance of history to end them all.
Yet it overlooks so much. It begs the question: what was happening to all those people living beneath the exquisite lifestyles of British lords and noble born Muslim Begums? You want find even a hint of an answer in Dalrymple's books. Of course, you cannot criticize him for a book he didn't write--about the fate of the classes not so ennobled. It's just that he seems so completely unaware. Could it be because Dalrymple is himself of such a social standing that he really cannot comprehend what his books so often omit?
As much as I enjoy reading these Dalrymple histories for the good and valuable timelines and personalities they present, I always feel that I've gorged on sweets rather than a nutritious dinner. And with White Mughals, I must say that Dalrymple is at his apex. This is the Harlequin Romance of history to end them all.
The premise of this book is simple, it relates the story of a relationship between a British Resident and a Hyderbadi Begum. But it is so much more than just a Romeo-Juliet love story. Dalrymple uses this relationship to illustrate the complex political, religious, and social environment of late-1700s/early 1800s India. An extensively researched book, he gives us the background of the initial relationship between the British and India, which is fundamentally different from the relations that we know from the later part of the 1800s and early 1900s. It is amazing to see that a seemingly simple and small decision can have political and historical ramifications for centuries. This is an excellently composed book that makes reading pure history entertaining and interesting.
Hyderabad is a City I’ve grown to love, and I picked up the book because I was curious to know more about her history. And I was not disappointed.
The book purports to be an account of the love story of the British Resident and a Muslim Noblewoman, but it is so much more than just that. It is the story of the changing dynamics between the British and the Princely States, of the life of people in that period, of the customs of the Hyderabadies (some of which survive to this day) and of the fate of Anglo Indians who escaped and those who didn’t.
Meticulously researched, but not boring, the characters spring to life fromu the pages of the book. You almost feel like a person looking down, watching the events unfurl. And places you know, come alive in similar but different form.
A book I would recommend to anyone who likes the history which is told through stories. It’s not a book for the impatient, but it’s also a book that’s almost unputdownable.
The book purports to be an account of the love story of the British Resident and a Muslim Noblewoman, but it is so much more than just that. It is the story of the changing dynamics between the British and the Princely States, of the life of people in that period, of the customs of the Hyderabadies (some of which survive to this day) and of the fate of Anglo Indians who escaped and those who didn’t.
Meticulously researched, but not boring, the characters spring to life fromu the pages of the book. You almost feel like a person looking down, watching the events unfurl. And places you know, come alive in similar but different form.
A book I would recommend to anyone who likes the history which is told through stories. It’s not a book for the impatient, but it’s also a book that’s almost unputdownable.