‘Reads like something from a thriller…colourful, comprehensive and meticulously explored’ Sunday Occasions

‘Gripping from start to complete’ Peter Frankopan, writer of The Silk Roads

‘Impressive and brilliantly explored nonfiction thriller…focussing using one extraordinary story that experienced never been properly told before’ William Dalrymple, Spectator

Anita Anand reads her own remarkable story of one Indian’s twenty-year search for revenge, taking him around the world in search of those he held about The Patient Assassin: A GENUINE Story of Massacre, Revenge as well as the Raj in charge of the Amritsar massacre of 1919, which cost the lives of hundreds.

When Sir Michael O’Dwyer, the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, purchased Brigadier General Reginald Dyer to Amritsar, he desired him to create the troublesome town to high heel. Sir Michael had become significantly alarmed at the result Gandhi was having on his province, aswell as recent presentations, strikes and shows of Hindu-Muslim unity. Each one of these things, in Sir Michael’s brain at least, had been a precursor to a second Indian Mutiny. What occurred next stunned the world. An unauthorised political gathering in the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar in Apr 1919 became the focal point for Sir Michael’s regulation enforcers. Dyer marched his military into the walled garden, filled with thousands of unarmed guys, women and children, blocking the just exit. Then, without issuing any order to disperse, he instructed his males to open open fire, turning their weapons over the thickest elements of the crowd. For 10 minutes, they continued firing, stopping only once 1650 bullets have been fired. Not a solitary shot was terminated in retaliation.

According to legend, a young, low-caste orphan, Udham Singh, was harmed in the attack, and continued to be in the Bagh, encircled by the dead and dying until he could move another morning. Then, he supposedly picked up a small number of blood-soaked globe, smeared it across his forehead and vowed to destroy the men responsible, no matter how long it took.

The reality, as the writer has discovered, is certainly more complex but believe it or not dramatic. She tracked Singh’s journey through Africa, america and across Europe before, in March 1940, he finally found its way to entrance of O’Dwyer in a London hall ready to shoot him down. The Patient Assassin shines a damaging light using one of the Raj’s most horrific events, but reads like a taut thriller, and uncovers some astonishing brand-new insights into what actually happened.