Bombay
‘The Rothschilds of the East’
David Abulafia admires the shrewdness, generosity and panache of the Sassoons over many generations
The wanderings of Ullis
Jeet Thayil’s previous novel, The Book of Chocolate Saints, an account of a fictional Indian artist and poet told in…
Return to the lost city
During a press interview in Bombay about his latest book, the author-narrator of Friend of My Youth feels ‘a surge…
Diary
I knew, the minute my job was first mooted, on the steps of San Francesco church in the sun-drenched, mafia-infested…
Rags, riches and respectability
In a grand history of the British empire — because that is what this book really is — you might…
