RollnSmoke Reviews: WHITE MUGHALS by William Dalrymple

WHITE MUGHALS by William Daltymple (Penguin, 2004)

This long, dense and massively notated historical narrative is set primarily in Hyderabad, India, at the turn of the 19th century, when the British commanded and colonized a strong Indo-Islamic civilization. An infamous, philandering commander, dubbed “The Handsome Colonel,” begets various children, among them two notable British military sons, both strong linguists. One, James Kirkpatrick, falls in love with a local princess, who becomes pregnant and amidst much family scandal and ugly gossip, marries her white, British lover who, himself, converts to Islam. The focus here is vast, wide-ranging and sometimes hard to follow, punctuated as it is with many letters and long descriptions of India and its alluring cultures (6/10).