The House of Awadh: A Hidden Tragedy

In Delhi's Ridge Forest lies Malcha Mahal, which was home to a family cloaked in mystery: Begum Wilayat Mahal and her children, Princess Sakina and Prince Ali Raza-self-proclaimed descendants of the House of Awadh. From their dramatic arrival at New Delhi Railway Station in 1975, where they squatted for a decade, to their last years in a decaying monument-their story weaves together colonial injustices, Partition's upheaval and modern India's struggles with identity.

Were they true heirs to a lost kingdom, delusional outcasts, or cunning impostors? Drawing on cross-border reportage, archives and intimate interviews, Aletta Andre and Abhimanyu Kumar explore the family's audacious claims as they bring to life an ambitious woman and her sensitive children. They also present a new account of the tragedy of Awadh and its slow ruin, as well as that of India-Pakistan relations from Independence to the present. Gripping and compelling, The House of Awadh is an unputdownable blend of history and memory.

Aletta André is a Dutch historian and journalist, who has covered South Asia for Dutch and international media since 2009. Her debut youth novel, Het meisje dat door India fietste (The girl who cycled through India), about the mass exodus of migrant labourers from Indian cities during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, was published in the Netherlands by Luitingh-Sijthoff in 2021. After fifteen years of living in New Delhi, she returned to her native Netherlands in 2024.

Abhimanyu Kumar is an Indian poet and journalist with a wide experience covering politics, arts, culture and minority issues. His poetry collection Milan and the Sea was published by Red River in 2017. He translated Australian poet Robert Wood's poetry collection Redgate, also published from Red River in 2020. His long-form reportage on lynchings in India was included in the anthology Notes from the Hinterland, published by Aleph Book Company in 2019. He divides his time between New Delhi and Deventer, the Netherlands, with Aletta André and their two kids.