India: A Portrait Patrick French's bestselling and critically acclaimedaccount of India-now available in paperback. India is the biggest democracy on earth, a country of dynamic change, huge divisions, and countless identities. Is there any way to discover the real India? In this intimate biography of 1.2 billion people, Patrick Frenchtravels all over the country talking to everyone from political leaders to mafia dons, from chained quarry workers to self-made billionaire entrepreneurs, to tell the story of post-independence India as never before. About the Author: Patrick French Patrick French is a writer and historian, born in England in 1966. Heis the author of Young husband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer, which won the Somerset Maugham Award and the Royal Society of literature W.H. Heinemann Prize, Liberty or Death: India's Journey independence and Division, which won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History of a Lost Land and, most recently, The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and theHawthornden Prize Reviews 'Much like [Leela's] life-elegant, spare, kind to enemies and warmly reminiscent about friends'? India Today 'It's gripping? If you're Indian, reading the book is like learning the history of your country in four days'- New Indian Express 'Fizzing with wit, insight and infectious curiosity ? a thoroughly enjoyable romp through six momentous decades'- Wall Street Journal Asia 'Wide-ranging, clear-sighted, warm-hearted and immensely readable? The human tales that French finds are engrossing'- Evening Standard 'A rich coloring of contemporary characters and events, many of them sharply observed at first hand. Crammed with elegant portraits' ? Economist Patrick French brings one of the globe's most dynamic nations springing to life? he has an encyclopedic knowledge of the country, sensitivity to its subtler nuances.