India A Portrait

Patrick French brings one of the globe's most dynamic nations springing to life ... he has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the country, sensitivity to its subtler nuances and a wealth of research. He also arrives with a mischievous sense of humour and a keen eye for the absurd and the bizarre' - Sunday TimesIndia is the biggest democracy on earth, a country of dynamic change, huge divisions and countless identities. Is there any way to discover the 'real' India? In this intimate biography of 1.2 billion people, Patrick French travels all over the country talking to everyone from political leaders to mafia dons, from chained quarry workers to self-made billionaire entrepreneurs, to tell the story of post-independence India as never before. About the AuthorPatrick 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 won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Hawthornden Prize.