<p>At midnight on August 14, 1947, Britain's 350-year-old Indian Empire cracked into three pieces. The greatest mass migration in history began, as Muslims fled north and Hindus fled south, over a million being massacred on the way. Britain's role as world power came to an end and the course of Asia's future was irrevocably set. Patrick French offers a reinterpretation of the events surrounding India's independence and partition, including the disastrous mistakes made by politicians and the bizarre reasoning behind many of their decisions. Exploring the interplay between characters such as Churchill, Mountbatten and Gandhi, it reveals a tale of idealism and manipulation, hope and tragedy. With sources ranging from newly declassified secret documents to the memories of refugees, Patrick French gives an account of an epic debacle, the impact of which reverberates across Asia to this day.</p>

Liberty or Death: India's Journey to Independence and Division

History

PATRICK FRENCH

Asia

HarperCollins Publishers, Ltd

Tibet, Tibet A Personal History of a Lost Land

KNOPF

<p>He finds a land with a long, warlike past and a complex interlocking relationship with China. He meets victims and perpetrators of Mao's Cultural Revolution, and young nuns who continue the fight against Communist rule. He stays in the tents of nomads, and hears first-hand accounts of the hopeless battle against overwhelmingly superior Chinese forces which ended, in a single day, a way of life which had endured for thousands of years. On his journey, Patrick French is continually sidetracked by a cascade of information, thoughts and reflections on such subjects: as how to blind a cabinet minister using a yak's knucklebones, the correct method of travelling across a desert by night, and the reasons for the Dalai Lama's transformation into 'an unknown dark-brown bird, bigger than a normal raven'. Patrick French has found a new way of writing about a place and its history. He fascinatingly illuminates one of the most persistently troubling of international issues, and confirms his reputation as one of the finest writers at work today.</p>

Tibet, Tibet : A Personal History of a Lost Land

Harper-perennial

India:A Portrait

Penguin

The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul

Biographies & Memoirs

Picador

The independence of india was a time of hope and uncertainty in equal measure it was also a time of accelerated history, when every decision-whether considered or arbitrary-had a lasting effect on its vast and diverse populace in the decades since, india has evolved into a globally prominent nation of enormous promise and achievement, great contradictions and conflict in this landmark book, patrick french, author of the acclaimed bestseller liberty or death: india's journey to independence and division, chronicles the epic change with his superb sense of history and political insight, and an eye for the extraordinary that is as keen as his understanding of the everyday, he builds a compelling narrative of the social and economic revolutions that are transforming india in fundamental ways beginning with an account of how the union was conceived and put together-when india took 'a gamble on democracy'-he examines the astonishing shift from rigid socialism to unbridled capitalism, the continuing empowerment of the dalit and lower castes, the anxieties of secular india's large muslim minority and the rise of violence in the conduct of the state and among those it neglects or suppresses focusing on the most recent changes, he shows how extreme hunger and destitution persist even as millions are pulling themselves free of poverty, how nepotism has triumphed in politics and how sudden societal changes allow the deeply traditional and the startlingly unconventional to co-exist along the way, french also paints revealing portraits of nehru, ambedkar, indira and sonia gandhi, mayawati, lk advani and manmohan singh and through his travels across india, he speaks to maoist revolutionaries, mafia dons, chained quarry workers, technological innovators, cash-rich pimps and self-made billionaire entrepreneurs, trying to answer the central question of the book: 'why is india like it is today?

India: A Portrait

Penguin??Books

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Books by PATRICK FRENCH