Description

Brought to you by Penguin

As she builds her own life anew an Italian writer embarks on an allconsuming search for the true story of the mysterious princess H H Amrit Kaur of Mandi

On a sweltering summer day in 2007 having just lost her brother to illness Livia Manera Sambuy finds herself standing before a 1924 photograph of a stunningly elegant Indian princess at a museum in Mumbai Whats written in the caption will change her life forever This gorgeous Punjabi princess its said 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

Could it be true And if so how could such a sensational story have gone unnoticed Instinctively almost viscerally Manera becomes entangled in the mystery losing herself in the history of the British Raj in the diamonds and sapphires of the twentiethcentury aristocracy in the Circus Balls and Jubilees and in the lives of extraordinary figures such as the Maharaja Jagatjit Singh of Kapurthala the Jewish banker Albert Kahn and the Russian explorer Nicholas Roerichall in a decadeslong pursuit of the elusive Amrit Kaur

When she rendezvouses with the princesss eightyyearold daughter Maneras search takes on a new dimension as she strives to reconnect an orphan with the mother who abandoned her in 1933 leaving behind her two children her raja husband and a legacy of activism in Indias womens civil rights movement

In Search of Amrit Kaur is an engrossing detective story a kaleidoscopic history lesson and a moving portrait of women across the century seeking personal freedom

Livia Manera Sambuy 2023 P Penguin Audio 2023