amrit kaur

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How I came to write In Search of Amrit Kaur 

Livia Manera Sambuy

Todd Portnowitz

Livia Manera is a wonderful detective-companion to lead us through this rich and complex world of princesses and prisoners of war, love and deceit, secrets and discovery... a thoroughly engaging read

'Remarkable and compelling. I loved this book'

Nuanced but relentlessly curious, Livia Manera Sambuy has a gift not only for listening to other people's stories but for probing and unfolding exceptional narratives. In Search of Amrit Kaur - an ambitious, absorbing work that peels back the layers of its enigmatic subject and digs deeply into the author's own emotional vicissitudes - is her crowning jewel

'An exemplary sleuth, both astute and open-minded . . . Manera Sambuy writes with impassioned style and insight'

An intimate and engrossing portrait of an extraordinary woman by a writer whose sense of story and place is perfect in every way

John Zubrzycki, author of THE HOUSE OF JAIPUR

Part personal odyssey, part history, part detective story, In Search of Amrit Kaur is a vivid and intriguing account of the quest - spanning three continents - to uncover the story of a tragic Indian princess

Katie Hickman, author of SHE-MERCHANTS, BUCCANEERS AND GENTLEWOMEN

A remarkable book about an extraordinary woman... impossible to put down. It offers a rare window into a vanished and exotic world

Rudrangshu Mukherjee, author of NEHRU & BOSE

A luminous portrait of both Amrit Kaur and Livia Manera: two exceptional women who had to question their assigned fates as daughters, wives, lovers and mothers in order to define themselves

Judith Thurman, author of SECRETS OF THE FLESH

Plenty of jewels, plenty of balls, plenty of secret agents and adventurous characters but also plenty of pain in the story that Manera tells, intertwining the destiny of a special woman to the vortex of equally special times.

'This biography is a many-faceted gem'

Weaving together biography and her personal narrative . . . [this is] an engaging book, with twists, turns, and detours galore'

'[Manera Sambuy's] eloquent and poetic prose enlivens the searching historiography. Original and difficult to classify, [In Search of Amrit Kaur] is a pleasure to read'

An Indian Princess in Wartime Paris

A lost princess and a vanished world: a remarkable true story that moves from the Punjab of the Raj to 1930s Paris and the Second World War 
 
‘Remarkable and compelling’ Edmund de Waal 
 
‘Thoroughly engaging’ Kamila Shamsie 
 
In a Mumbai museum in 2007, Livia Manera Sambuy encounters a photograph that will change her life forever. 
The caption claims that the Punjabi princess Amrit Kaur sold her jewels in occupied Paris to save Jewish lives, only to be arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp where she died within a year. 
 
For Livia, this marks the beginning of a compulsive search for the truth as she delves into the history of the British Raj, the diamonds and sapphires of the twentieth-century aristocracy, and the lives of extraordinary figures: bankers, jewellers, explorers and spies. 
 
‘An ambitious, absorbing work that peels back the layers of its enigmatic subject and digs deeply into the author's own emotional vicissitudes’ Jhumpa Lahiri 
 
‘A tantalizing true story . . . In Search of Amrit Kaur plunges into the glittery world of Indian royalty’ New York Times Book Review

In Search of Amrit Kaur

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Praise for In Search of Amrit Kaur

Livia Manera is a wonderful detective-companion to lead us through this rich and complex world of princesses and prisoners of war, love and deceit, secrets and discovery... a thoroughly engag ...

'Remarkable and compelling. I loved this book'

Nuanced but relentlessly curious, Livia Manera Sambuy has a gift not only for listening to other people's stories but for probing and unfolding exceptional narratives. In Search of Amrit Kaur - ...

Livia Manera is a wonderful detective-companion to lead us through this rich and complex world of princesses and prisoners of war, love and deceit, secrets and discovery... a thoroughly engag ...

'Remarkable and compelling. I loved this book'

Nuanced but relentlessly curious, Livia Manera Sambuy has a gift not only for listening to other people's stories but for probing and unfolding exceptional narratives. In Search of Amrit Kaur - ...

Livia Manera is a wonderful detective-companion to lead us through this rich and complex world of princesses and prisoners of war, love and deceit, secrets and discovery... a thoroughly engag ...

'Remarkable and compelling. I loved this book'

Nuanced but relentlessly curious, Livia Manera Sambuy has a gift not only for listening to other people's stories but for probing and unfolding exceptional narratives. In Search of Amrit Kaur - ...

Articles featuring Livia Manera Sambuy

How I came to write In Search of Amrit Kaur

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