The Mutiny

(Hardback)

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* A devastating portrait of a love affair played out at the height of one of the most violent episodes in British colonial history.

1856. Azimullah Khan, a charismatic Pathan, moves through London society, eliciting support for his patron the Nana Sahib's claim to be restored as Peshwar of the Maharatha Confederacy. Charlie Bosham is recruited by the British government to spy on him. Charlie, never one to allow loyalty to stand between him and his own welfare, soon becomes involved in the Nana's plot to recover his inheritance. Back in Delhi the conspirators, including the glamorous, young but doomed Maharanee of Jhansi and the old King of Delhi, the last survivor of the Mughal dynasty, foment the mutiny in the native regiments of the East India Company.The focus now shifts to a lieutenant in the Gordon Highlanders, his pursuit of an Indian Princess with whom he is in love, and to her brother who has fallen for the Anglo-Indian daughter of a British colonel. Through their eyes we experience the outbreak at Meerut, the sieges of Delhi, Cawnpore and Lucknow, the massacres and extraordinary heroism on both sides, and star-crossed love affairs.

Reviews

** 'Harrowing but magnetic With his customary rigour, Rathbone marshals extensive research to create the framework of his epic drama. Against this background he weaves the threads of smaller stories, intimate and personal accounts of individual tragedies Larger even than the conflict itself is India, elegantly and luminously brought to life in the consistently scintillating prose of this novel of real accomplishment' THE TIMES

** 'Rathbone sets himself an ambitious challenge in THE MUTINY but he succeeds brilliantly in re-creating the chaos, the savagery and the clash of cultures in India in 1857. The stories of his own characters are all woven seamlessly into the wider narrative of a world turned upside down. THE MUTINY is fiction that movingly reanimates the history upon which it draws SUNDAY TIMES

** 'Although the story of the mutiny has been told many times, it is fascinating to revisit it in such intelligent company ambitious, sweeping The British, with their quaint slang, and casual, unthinking racism, are very convincingly drawn. Rathbone also elicits great sympathy for the Indian mutineers, with their complex, often contradictory, motives' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

** 'Enjoyable and exciting to read Rathbone reveals himself to be a novelist of skill, compassion and imagination' TLS

** 'The fierce drama, complexity and enigma of the Indian Mutiny make it

Author Bio

Julian Rathbone is the author of many books, including the bestselling THE LAST ENGLISH KING, KINGS OF ALBION and the Booker shortlisted JOSEPH, as well as the hugely acclaimed A VERY ENGLISH AGENT.

Author Location: Dorset

JOSEPH, THE LAST ENGLISH KING, KINGS OF ALBION, A VERY ENGLISH AGENT (0 349 11508 7), BIRTH OF A NATION (0 316 72586 2)