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    The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge and the Raj
    Unavailable
    The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge and the Raj
    Unavailable
    The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge and the Raj
    Audiobook10 hours

    The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge and the Raj

    Written by Anita Anand

    Narrated by Anita Anand

    4.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    WINNER OF THE PEN HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZE 2020

    'Reads     like a thriller…colourful, detailed and meticulously researched' Sunday Times
    ‘Gripping from start to finish' Peter Frankopan, bestselling author of The Silk Roads
    Anita Anand tells the remarkable story of one Indian's twenty-year quest for revenge, taking him around the world in search of those he held responsible for the Amritsar massacre of 1919, which cost the lives of hundreds.

    When Sir Michael O'Dwyer, the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, ordered Brigadier General Reginald Dyer to Amritsar, he wanted him to bring the troublesome city to heel. What happened next shocked the world. An unauthorised political gathering in the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar in April 1919 became the focal point for Sir Michael's law enforcers. Dyer marched his soldiers into the walled garden, filled with thousands of unarmed men, women and children, blocking the only exit. Then, without issuing any order to disperse, he instructed his men to open fire, stopping only when 1650 bullets had been fired. Not a single shot was fired in retaliation.

    According to legend, a young, low-caste orphan, Udham Singh, was injured in the attack, and remained in the Bagh, surrounded by the dead and dying until he was able to move the next morning. Then, he supposedly picked up a handful of blood-soaked earth, smeared it across his forehead and vowed to kill the men responsible, no matter how long it took.

    The truth, as the author has discovered, is more complex but no less dramatic. She traced Singh's journey through Africa, the United States and across Europe before, in March 1940, he finally arrived in front of O'Dwyer in a London hall ready to shoot him down. 

    The Patient Assassin shines a devastating light on one of the Raj's most horrific event, and reveals some astonishing new insights into what really happened.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio UK
    Release dateApr 4, 2019
    ISBN9781471180385
    Unavailable
    The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge and the Raj
    Author

    Anita Anand

    Anita Anand is a political journalist who has presented television and radio programmes on the BBC for twenty years. She currently presents Any Answers on Radio 4. She is the author of Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary and, with William Dalrymple, Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World's Most Infamous Diamond. She lives with her husband and two children in London. 

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    4.5/5

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    • 4/5
      In April, 1919, following a series of protests, there was a brutal massacre in Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar in the Punjab. One man, Udham Singh, a Sikh orphan, made it his mission in life to chase down the man he thought responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Indians: Sir Michael O’Dwyer, the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, at the time.The narrative follows Singh as he travels from India to the UK, Mexico, the U. S., Russia, Uganda, and all over Europe as he devises his plan to assassinate the man he held responsible. During the course of the next twenty years he is imprisoned, and becomes a part of the Uthers, a group that tried to remove the British from India, among other things.Singh is considered a hero in India and Indhira Ghandi welcomed the return of his body years after he was executed for O'Dwyers' murder.This was a bit of history that I knew nothing about so I was enlightened by the book. Very well researched but could've been a bit less detailed.