Review: The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple

For anyone interested in the world of mid-Nineteenth-Century India, this is a wonderful book. William Dalrymple has established himself as one of the most original and compelling authors writing today about the Indian sub-continent and the Middle East. His capacity to paint graphic word pictures of lost worlds, his masterly storytelling abilities and scholarship, and his clear sympathy for the Sufi culture of the late Mughal Dynasty all make his work compulsively readable. This book tells the poignant tale of the last Mughal emperor of India in the days leading up to the Indian Mutiny (or First War of Independence, as the Indians call it).