It’s India in 1951. After wilfully ignoring orders, Persis Wadia, India’s first female police detective, is exiled from Bombay to the wild and mountainous Naga Hills District. As India’s first post-Independence election looms, and tensions rise across the country, Persis finds herself banished to the Hotel Victoria, a crumbling colonial-era relic, her career in tatters. […]
Headhunters of the Naga Hills
Vaseem Khan’s latest murder mystery is set in Nagaland, in the north-eastern region of India. He writes about the history of the area once known as the Naga Hills and the tribes who lived there – people who were, until fairly recently, headhunters. In the far north-eastern corner of India is the state of Nagaland, […]
Bloody Assaye by Griff Hosker
As the dust settles on the first resistance to British rule in India, a new storm brews on the horizon. The Wellesley brothers strategise their next offensive, eager to support their new allies in the turbulent Indian subcontinent. Fresh troops arrive, injecting fervour and ambition into the ranks of the East India Company’s army. For […]
The Tiger and the Thief by Griff Hosker
Although he’s now hidden in a company of East India soldiers, Bill ‘Smudger’ Smith still harbours an intention to escape. These plans are put on hold, however, when his former life as a wharf rat comes back to haunt him. Bill is a skilled thief with a sharp talent for deception. When the Company needs […]
City of Destruction by Vaseem Khan
Bombay, 1951, and a political rally ends in tragedy when India’s first female police detective, Persis Wadia, kills a lone gunman as he attempts to assassinate the divisive new defence minister, a man calling for war with India’s new post-Independence neighbours. With the Malabar House team tasked to hunt down the assassin’s co-conspirators — aided […]
The Living Legend: Ramayana Tales from Far and Near by Vayu Naidu
Rama is all of 16 when Sage Viswamithra takes him to the Dandaka forest, with Lakshmana accompanying them. At first, the spirit of adventure fills the two teenage brothers, but when they enter the forest in broad daylight, it is a curtain of pitch darkness. The smell of decaying flesh, flashes of fire, and the […]
A Nest of Vipers by Harini Nagendra
When Edward, Prince of Wales, begins a tour of a number of Indian cities in 1921, he encounters passionate crowds demanding independence from Britain, with rioting on the streets of Bombay in November. The mood of the prince’s subsequent trip to Bangalore and Mysore in January 1922 appears, at first glance, very different and is […]
Magic versus jadoo in 1920s British Colonial India
Harini Nagendra writes about the street magicians of India and how these performers of jadoo fascinated Westerners, who copied their ‘tricks’ unashamedly. But the jadoogars, unlike some of their cobras, still had fangs. Growing up in India in the 1970s, I read widely, but was especially fascinated by books that featured animals, and magic. Enid […]