Freedom at midnight - Softcover

Larry Collins; Dominique Lapierre

  • 4.33 out of 5 stars
    11,236 ratings by Goodreads
 
9780002160551: Freedom at midnight
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0002160552 ISBN 13: 9780002160551
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1975

Synopsis

The electrifying story of India's struggle for independence, told in this classic account (first published in 1975) by two fine journalists who conducted hundreds of interviews with nearly all the surviving participants -- from Mountbatten to the assassins of Mahatma Gandhi. On 14 August 1947 one-fifth of humanity claimed their independence from the greatest empire history has ever seen. But 400 million people were to find that the immediate price of freedom was partition and war, riot and murder. In this superb reconstruction, Collins and Lapierre recount the eclipse of the fabled British Raj and examine the roles enacted by, among others, Mahatma Gandhi and Lord Mountbatten in its violent transformation into the new India and Pakistan. This is the India of Jawaharlal Nehru, heart-broken by the tragedy of the country's division; of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, a Moslem who drank, ate pork and rarely entered a mosque, yet led 45 million Moselms to nationhood; of Gandhi, who stirred a subcontinent without raising his voice; of the last viceroy, Mountbatten, beseeched by the leaders of an independent India to take back the powers he'd just passed to them.

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From the Publisher

'Thrilling ... staggers the imagination.' - DAILY MAIL

'There is no single passage in I this profoundly researched book that one could actually fault. Having been there most of the time in question, I can vouch for the accuracy of its general mood. It is a work of scholarship, of investigation, research and of significance.' JAMES CAMERON, NEW YORK TIMES The dialogue is convincing, the story is emotionally moving and it contains some of the best descriptions of battle I've read..." - TIME OUT

"I defy a reader to put the book down once Robinson has got him into the air..." Paul Fussell, NEW REPUBLIC 'The song of India ... illuminated in scenes like a pageant.' - TIME

'A heroic tale that has not been told a tenth as, well before ... It will give more non-Indians more knowledge of the vast circumstances surrounding the birth of India than anything previously written. With an instinct for drama and a skill in narration, the authors take the reader from Whitehall to Delhi, to Calcutta, to Lahore, to Pula, to the villages of the Punjab and Bengal; their hold on the reader never falters.' - JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH

About the Author

The enormous success of the international writing partnership of Collins and Lapierre is based on the phenomenal non-fiction bestsellers OR I'LL DRESS YOU IN MOURNING, IS PARIS BURNING? and O JERUSALEM! More recently Lapierre wrote CITY OF JOY (about Calcutta) and Larry Collins has written a number of thrillers published by HarperCollins (FALL FROM GRACE, MAZE and BLACK EAGLES). Lapierre is French, Collins American.

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Publisher
Simon & Schuster
Publication date
1975
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0002160552
ISBN 13 
9780002160551
Binding
Paperback
Number of pages
500
Rating
  • 4.33 out of 5 stars
    11,236 ratings by Goodreads