Williamsburg Regional Library

In search of Amrit Kaur, a lost princess and her vanished world, Livia Manera Sambuy ; translated from the Italian by Todd Portnowitz

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 307-314) and index

individual biography

mapsplatesillustrations

index present

non fiction

In search of Amrit Kaur

bibliography

1346988857

Livia Manera Sambuy ; translated from the Italian by Todd Portnowitz

a lost princess and her vanished world

"On a sweltering day in 2007, having just lost her brother to illness, Livia Manera Sambuy finds herself at a museum in Mumbai, enthralled by a 1924 photograph of a stunningly elegant Indian princess. What she reads in the picture's caption will change her life forever. This alluring Punjabi royal had supposedly sold her jewels in occupied wartime Paris to save Jewish lives, only to be arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp, where she died within a year. Could it be true? And if so, how could such a sensational story have gone unreported? Almost against her will, Manera becomes drawn into the mystery of Amrit Kaur. Delving into the history of the British Raj, its durbars and society balls and jubilees, she shows us the precipitous decline of India's royal caste through the lives of extraordinary figures such as Amrit's father, the larger-than-life Maharaja Jagatjit Singh of Kapurthala; the Jewish banker Albert Kahn; and the Russian explorer Nicholas Roerich--all while pursuing the elusive Amrit Kaur's story. When she meets with the princess's eighty-year-old daughter, Manera's search takes on a new dimension, as she strives to reintroduce an orphan to a mother who disappeared in 1933, leaving behind two children, her raja husband, and a legacy of activism in India's nascent women's civil rights movement." -- inside front jacket flap

adult

Lost princess and her vanished world