An enthralling story of nationalism filled with historical touches and lush details.
In this debut historical novel, the residents of an 18th-century Indian province fight a British company to protect their domestic commodities.
Bengal is India’s richest province in 1756 and the place for highly sought-after materials like silks and muslin. It attracts traders from around the world and such concerns as the British East India Company. But trouble begins with Bengal’s “shifting political landscape.” The province’s beloved ruler (or Nawab), Alivardi Khan, dies, and his grandson, Siraj ud-Daulah, is his heir apparent. Officials belonging to the Nawab’s court fear Siraj is too unpredictable while the leaders of the East India Company worry he’s aligned with their French trading rivals. Sure enough, newly minted Nawab Siraj sets his sights on Fort William, the company’s principal settlement in Bengal, which the British had begun fortifying even before Alivardi’s death. Despite this, Siraj’s army seizes the fort. Meanwhile, British warships had recently docked in India to confront French forces. But Robert Clive, governor of another British fort in India, uses that extra muscle to retake Fort William. He has Bengali allies, too, including Mir Jafar, a senior commander of the Bengal army who’s upset he was passed over as Calcutta’s governor, and Mehtab Rai, a financier whom Siraj senselessly humiliated not long ago. Bengali officials who help the other side may soon regret their decision, as the British, if they gain the upper hand, will be in a perfect position to exert their dominance in India—gradually taking away the country’s commodities as well as its identity.
In this tale, Roy smoothly mingles historical figures with fictional characters. For example, real-life Alivardi Khan and Siraj ud-Daulah are just as integral to the story as the fictional nobleman Javed Hussain and his assertive son, Sarfaraz. The spotlight actually hits quite a few well-developed characters, such that it’s truly shocking when someone dies or finds himself arrested for treason. At the same time, there’s a balanced mix of conflicts (“The gates of the fort groaned under the relentless blows of a battering ram, wood splintering with each strike”) and characters’ discussions of events that either have happened or most assuredly will. Readers unfamiliar with the history of Bengal will have much to take in, from India’s culture and local foods to the country’s political climate. But the author also dives deep into the story’s cast, as some individuals prove tirelessly greedy and others ultimately lament the choices they’ve made. One remorseful man even has an enlightening conversation with his reflection in a mirror and, later, an elaborate, ominous dream. Despite the book’s relatively short length, it scrupulously covers several years in the mid-1700s and wisely keeps the action in Bengal (regardless of where each character hails from). Roy’s lyrical prose makes reading this novel a breeze: “Reclining on a pile of silk cushions, his fingers trembled as he cradled the slender pipe…Outside, the faint sounds of the Nawab’s camp filtered through the tent—soldiers’ murmurs, the occasional neigh of restless horses, and the distant beat of war drums meant to rally courage.”
An enthralling story of nationalism filled with historical touches and lush details.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781764129909
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Emberline Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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