Author: Patrick French
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2012
Language: English
Pages: 435
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9780143418702
Description
India is the biggest democracy on earth, a country if dynamic changes, 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.
COMMENTS:
“The heart of French’s book is the tangled story of India’s contemporary politics and the country’s rapid economic transformation in the past two decades.’
--- Basharat Peer, Caravan
‘Brilliantly addresses such things as the historicity of Hindi films and the iconography built up around Indira and Sonia Gandhi.’
--- Mihir S. Sharma, Indian Express
‘India, for French, is not an area of darkness, nor a wounded civilization. There are a million mutinies, but the portrait French offers is more complex.’
--- Salil Tripathi, Independent
‘French is a wonderful observer of people, and can pin a psyche down with a few words.’
--- Dwight Garner, New York Times
‘A rich colouring of contemporary characters and events, sharply observed.’
--- Economist
Contents
Introduction
Part I – Rashtra – Nation
1. Accelerated History
2. There will be Blood
3. The Centrifuge
4. Family Politics
Part II – Lakshmi – Wealth
5. The Visions of John Maynard Keynes
6. A Dismal Prospect
7. Falcon 900
8. A Quarry near Mysore
Part III – Samaj : Society
9. The Outcastes’ Revenge
10. 4 Ever
11. Solace of Religion
12. Only in India
Notes
Acknowledgements
Index