In Search of Amrit Kaur
  • Published: 7 February 2023
  • ISBN: 9781784741204
  • Imprint: Chatto & Windus
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $40.00
Categories:

In Search of Amrit Kaur

An Indian Princess in Wartime Paris

Formats & editions
Paperback
15 Apr 2025
Tr. Paperback
7 Feb 2023
Hardback
7 Feb 2023
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A lost princess and a vanished world: a remarkable true story that moves from the Punjab of the Raj to 1930s Paris and the cataclysm of the Second World War

'Remarkable and compelling. I loved this book' EDMUND DE WAAL
'An exemplary sleuth, both astute and open-minded . . . Manera Sambuy writes with impassioned style and insight' TELEGRAPH

A lost princess and a vanished world: a remarkable true story that moves from the Punjab of the Raj to 1930s Paris and the cataclysm of the Second World War

On a sweltering day in 2007, Italian writer Livia Manera Sambuy encounters a photograph of Princess Amrit Kaur in a Mumbai museum. The picture is arresting, gorgeous - but the caption will change Livia's life forever. It claims that the Punjabi princess 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.

It's a sensational story - and for Livia, 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. Past and present converge when Livia travels to meet Bubbles, the princess's daughter, now in her eighties. Striving to reconnect Bubbles with the elusive woman who abandoned her in 1933, Livia unearths a strange and complicated family history; one that diverges unexpectedly from the story that she set out to uncover.

Filled with glamour and terror, beauty and sorrow, In Search of Amrit Kaur is an engrossing detective story, a kaleidoscopic history lesson, and a moving portrait of mothers, lovers and daughters across the century, seeking personal freedom.
  • Published: 7 February 2023
  • ISBN: 9781784741204
  • Imprint: Chatto & Windus
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $40.00
Categories:

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 engaging read

Kamila Shamsie, author of HOME FIRE

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

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

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

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

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

Jhumpa Lahiri, author of WHEREABOUTS

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.

Il Sole 24 Ore, Italy

'Remarkable and compelling. I loved this book'

Edmund de Waal

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

Telegraph

'This biography is a many-faceted gem'

Asian Review of Books

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

Kirkus Reviews

'[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'

Publishers Weekly

Fascinating

TLS

Tantalising...full of intrigue

Observer