Dalrymple's account of the 1857 Indian Uprising through the figure of the last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar — a poet-king destroyed by an event he neither started nor controlled.
The 1857 Uprising from the Indian side: using Delhi court records, Urdu newspapers, and correspondence, Dalrymple reconstructs the siege of Delhi from within. Bahadur Shah Zafar as the book's center: an aged, gentle poet who became the reluctant symbol of Indian resistance. The British reprisals after the fall of Delhi: massacres and summary executions that Dalrymple documents unflinchingly. A major rewriting of a pivotal event in Indian history.
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