King Edward’s success in repressing stories of one of Queen Victoria’s advisers has now been overturned with solid research...
The story of the Indian man who took the place of John Brown in Queen Victoria’s life and heart.
Basu (For King and Another Country: Indian Soldiers on the Western Front, 1914-18, 2016, etc.) had access to heretofore unseen documents, letters, and interviews regarding Abdul Karim (1863-1909) and his controversial relationship with the queen. Upon the queen’s death in 1901, King Edward VII immediately sent for all of Victoria’s correspondence, which they burned promptly on the spot. In 1887, Karim traveled from Agra to England as part of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee celebration to showcase Britain’s empire. He was one of two Indians chosen to be servants to the queen, though he looked more like a nawab (a kind of Indian prince) than a servant. Eventually, he became a munshi, a teacher or counselor. Though she never visited, Victoria loved India, and many Indian princes attended the jubilee and were given pride of place at the table. Victoria also loved to show off her Indian servants to other European nobles during her annual spring vacations on the continent. Karim quickly endeared himself to the queen, telling her stories of India, cooking curries, and teaching her his language. Their daily lessons enabled her to read and write Urdu and to greet visiting maharajas in their native tongue. Of course, the queen’s household and the other servants were quick to grumble as jealousy and outright hatred grew. In class-conscious England, the author ably shows, Karim overstepped all bounds. He was not just a munshi; he influenced political affairs, was served with the household rather than the servants, and was given cottages for his own use. Karim gave Victoria someone to talk to; like John Brown, he lifted her spirits. In a book packed with names and hierarchy, Basu helpfully includes a dramatis personae and a family tree.
King Edward’s success in repressing stories of one of Queen Victoria’s advisers has now been overturned with solid research and crisp, clear writing.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-525-43441-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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