As she builds her own life anew, an Italian writer embarks on an all-consuming search for the true story of the mysterious princess H. H. Amrit Kaur of Mandi. On a sweltering day in 2007, having just lost her brother to illness, Livia Manera Sambuy finds herself at a museum in Mumbai, enthralled by a 1924 photograph of a stunningly elegant Indian princess. What she reads in the picture’s caption will change her life forever. This alluring Punjabi royal had supposedly sold her jewels in occupied wartime Paris to save Jewish lives, only to be arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp, where she died within a year. Could it be true? And if so, how could such a sensational story have gone unreported? Almost against her will, Manera becomes drawn into the mystery of Amrit Kaur. Delving into the history of the British Raj, its durbars and society balls and jubilees, she shows us the precipitous decline of India’s royal caste through the lives of extraordinary figures such as Amrit’s father, the larger-than-life Maharaja Jagatjit Singh of Kapurthala; the Jewish banker Albert Kahn; and the Russian explorer Nicholas Roerich—all while pursuing the elusive Amrit Kaur’s story. When she meets with the princess’s eighty-year-old daughter, Manera’s search takes on a new dimension, as she strives to reintroduce an orphan to a mother who disappeared in 1933, leaving behind two children, her raja husband, and a legacy of activism in India’s nascent women’s civil rights movement. In Search of Amrit Kaur is an engrossing detective story, a kaleidoscopic history lesson, and a moving portrait of a woman seeking personal freedom against the backdrop of a world in upheaval.

On a sweltering day in 2007, Italian writer Livia Manera Sambuy encounters a photograph of Princess Amrit Kaur in a Mumbai museum. The picture is arresting, gorgeous - but the caption will change Livia's life forever. It claims that the Punjabi princess sold her jewels in occupied Paris to save Jewish lives, only to be arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp where she died within a year. It's a sensational story - and for Livia, the beginning of a compulsive search for the truth as she delves into the history of the British Raj, the diamonds and sapphires of the twentieth-century aristocracy, and the lives of extraordinary figures- bankers, jewellers, explorers and spies. Past and present converge when Livia travels to meet Bubbles, the princess's daughter, now in her eighties. Striving to reconnect Bubbles with the elusive woman who abandoned her in 1933, Livia unearths a strange and complicated family history; one that diverges unexpectedly from the story that she set out to uncover. Filled with glamour and terror, beauty and sorrow, In Search of Amrit Kaur is an engrossing detective story, a kaleidoscopic history lesson, and a moving portrait of mothers, lovers and daughters across the century, seeking personal freedom.

'Remarkable and compelling. I loved this book' EDMUND DE WAAL 'An exemplary sleuth, both astute and open-minded . . . Manera Sambuy writes with impassioned style and insight' TELEGRAPH A lost princess and a vanished world: a remarkable true story that moves from the Punjab of the Raj to 1930s Paris and the cataclysm of the Second World War On a sweltering day in 2007, Italian writer Livia Manera Sambuy encounters a photograph of Princess Amrit Kaur in a Mumbai museum. The picture is arresting, gorgeous - but the caption will change Livia's life forever. It claims that the Punjabi princess sold her jewels in occupied Paris to save Jewish lives, only to be arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp where she died within a year. It's a sensational story - and for Livia, the beginning of a compulsive search for the truth as she delves into the history of the British Raj, the diamonds and sapphires of the twentieth-century aristocracy, and the lives of extraordinary figures: bankers, jewellers, explorers and spies. Past and present converge when Livia travels to meet Bubbles, the princess's daughter, now in her eighties. Striving to reconnect Bubbles with the elusive woman who abandoned her in 1933, Livia unearths a strange and complicated family history; one that diverges unexpectedly from the story that she set out to uncover. Filled with glamour and terror, beauty and sorrow, In Search of Amrit Kaur is an engrossing detective story, a kaleidoscopic history lesson, and a moving portrait of mothers, lovers and daughters across the century, seeking personal freedom. * WINNER OF THE CAPALBIO PIAZZA MAGENTA LITERARY PRIZE 2023 *

In this exhilarating celebration of human ingenuity and perseverance—published all around the world—a trailblazing Italian scholar sifts through our cultural and social behavior in search of the origins of our greatest invention: writing. The L where a tabletop meets the legs, the T between double doors, the D of an armchair’s oval backrest—all around us is an alphabet in things. But how did these shapes make it onto the page, never mind form complex structures such as this sentence? In The Greatest Invention, Silvia Ferrara takes a profound look at how—and how many times—human beings have managed to produce the miracle of written language, traveling back and forth in time and all across the globe to Mesopotamia, Crete, China, Egypt, Central America, Easter Island, and beyond. With Ferrara as our guide, we examine the enigmas of undeciphered scripts, including famous cases like the Phaistos Disk and the Voynich Manuscript; we touch the knotted, colored strings of the Inca quipu; we study the turtle shells and ox scapulae that bear the earliest Chinese inscriptions; we watch in awe as Sequoyah single-handedly invents a script for the Cherokee language; and we venture to the cutting edge of decipherment, in which high-powered laser scanners bring tears to an engineer’s eye. A code-cracking tour around the globe, The Greatest Invention chronicles a previously uncharted journey, one filled with past flashes of brilliance, present-day scientific research, and a faint, fleeting glimpse of writing’s future.

The book begins with the momentous task of demolishing the prejudices attached with the phrase 'founding fathers' that has held an immense sway over constitutional interpretation. It shows that women members of the Indian Constituent Assembly had painstakingly co-authored a Constitution that embodied a moral imagination developed by years of feminist politics. It traces the genealogies of several constitutional provisions to argue that, without the interventions of these women framers, the Constitution would hardly have a much poorer document of rights and statecraft that it is. Situating these interventions in the larger trajectory of Indian feminism in which they are rooted, in the nationalist discourse with which they perpetually negotiated, and in the larger human rights discourse of the 1940s, the book shows that the women members of the Indian Constituent Assembly were much more than the 'founding mothers' of a republic.

Opening in July 1914, as Mohandas Gandhi leaves South Africa to return to India, Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914-1918 traces the Mahatma’s life over the three decades preceding his assassination. Drawing on new archival materials, acclaimed historian Ramachandra Guha follows Gandhi’s struggle to deliver India from British rule, to forge harmonious relations between India’s Hindus and Muslims, to end the pernicious practice of untouchability, and to nurture India’s economic and moral self-reliance. He shows how in each of these campaigns, Gandhi adapted methods of nonviolence that successfully challenged British authority and would influence revolutionary movements throughout the world. A revelatory look at the complexity of Gandhi’s thinking and motives, the book is a luminous portrait of not only the man himself, but also those closest to him—family, friends, and political and social leaders.

The year is 1950; the Liaquat-Nehru Pact has been signed between India and Pakistan; she doesn't know it will change her life forever; it will also make her stronger Bibi Amrit Kaur's life is literally torn apart in the 1947 riots. She's now in a different country with a different identity. She accepts this new life gracefully and begins a new chapter. She gets married and has two children. Life, however, has something else in store for her. It breaks her apart. Again. This time the pain is unbearable. But the hope that she will reunite with her children and be whole again keeps her alive. And she doesn't let the bitterness cloud her days, becoming a beacon of hope and courage for all. From the bestselling author of Calling Sehmat comes another hitherto untold story of strength, sacrifice and resilience. A must read.