Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.23 AVERAGE
3.23 AVERAGE
emotional
inspiring
lighthearted
relaxing
I’ve learnt and read a lot about the British Raj in India and the reign of the late Queen Victoria, but we never learnt in secondary school about when and how Queen Victoria started learning Hindi and Urdu from her Munshi who is a minister that looks after all affair during the Mughal Empire. Munshi Hanif Abdul Karim.
This book explores Queen Victoria’s relations with India and the Indian people. How Abdul Karim who worked as a clerk doing admin duties at the Agra jail alongside his father to coming to London as a waiter during Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee where Maharaja’s and Maharani’s from all corners of India wearing their beautiful, colourful and yet traditional clothes at the request of Queen Victoria with beautiful and expensive gifts for the Empress of India as Queen Victoria was called.
I liked how the book tells about a lonely Queen Victoria after the death of her husband Prince Albert and John Brown. The queen found a friend in Abdul and formed an unbreakable relationship with Abdul as she could share anything from good to anything.
Shrabani Basu has done a good amount of research on Abdul Karim locating the remains of his house in Agra to his grave including the research on the late Queen Victoria by going through the Queens letters, her diaries and the books where she wrote in Urdu, an easy book to read and I hope the movie is a good adaptation of this book.
This book explores Queen Victoria’s relations with India and the Indian people. How Abdul Karim who worked as a clerk doing admin duties at the Agra jail alongside his father to coming to London as a waiter during Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee where Maharaja’s and Maharani’s from all corners of India wearing their beautiful, colourful and yet traditional clothes at the request of Queen Victoria with beautiful and expensive gifts for the Empress of India as Queen Victoria was called.
I liked how the book tells about a lonely Queen Victoria after the death of her husband Prince Albert and John Brown. The queen found a friend in Abdul and formed an unbreakable relationship with Abdul as she could share anything from good to anything.
Shrabani Basu has done a good amount of research on Abdul Karim locating the remains of his house in Agra to his grave including the research on the late Queen Victoria by going through the Queens letters, her diaries and the books where she wrote in Urdu, an easy book to read and I hope the movie is a good adaptation of this book.
I picked up this book after enjoying the movie. I think the author did a good job of chronicling the relationship between the queen and Abdul Karim. But this is one of those rare cases where I preferred the movie to the book. The pedestrian prose made the book more of a slog. And the movie was able to communicate an imagining of the spark that Abdul Karim possessed that made him such a favorite of the queen. I'm glad I read this and I did learn some new information from the book. It's a remarkable story.
A long, and not always interesting, in-depth account of the controversial friendship of Queen Victoria and an Indian servant.
I picked up a DVD of the movie at the local library. I enjoyed it, even though it wasn't very fast paced. It was an interesting historical story with excellent acting. When I realized it was based on a book, of course I wanted to read it.
The book is usually better than the movie, but not in this case. While the movie was able to break up dryer spots with a bit of humor or fun, the book was just dry. I just could not get into it enough to make it through very far.
The book is usually better than the movie, but not in this case. While the movie was able to break up dryer spots with a bit of humor or fun, the book was just dry. I just could not get into it enough to make it through very far.
I really enjoyed getting this look into Queen Victoria’s later life and her friendship with Abdul. I enjoyed reading this book very much!
As a pupil, I remember seeing pictures of Queen Victoria surrounded by her Indian servants in one of my History textbooks in school. Back then, I didn’t know what to make of it. Clearly, I was unaware of the extent of interest the Queen showed in the ruling of the Indian subcontinent.
It was not until I was invited to a screening of the film Victoria and Abdul by Bloomsbury Publishing, India that I was presented with an unbelievable true story. Victoria and Abdul by Shrabani Basu is a part of my Non-fiction November reading list. It’s a well-researched account of the 13 years Abdul Karim spent in the presence of Queen Victoria as her Munshi or personal instructor. The book reads like a novel that’s substantiated by reports in the form of facts and excerpts from original documents. Victoria and Abdul is an eye-opener to the personal life of Queen Victoria in the last decade of her reign as the Empress of India. Through this insightful work, Basu gives us an intimate glimpse into the household affairs of the most powerful woman on earth, at the time.
The work is enhanced by the inclusion of black and white photographs, paintings, and archival documents such as newspaper articles which really make this book an interesting read.
Queen Victoria never had the chance to travel to India but she was always enamored by its people and culture. Extremely proud was she to bear the title of Empress of India and rule a country that was 3000 miles away. Abdul Karim gives the aging Queen Victoria the companionship she needed during the last years of her life that many within her own family and household failed to provide. Karim taught her Hindustani (Urdu) in the course of 13 years and updated her with the political scenario in India at the time. She trusted him fully and treated him as far more than a servant which spurned jealously and ill feeling among Indian servants and the household at large.
Nobody understood what Queen Victoria saw in her beloved “Munshi”. They utterly failed to grasp this relationship which was beyond class, caste, color, and language.
Historians and us can only speculate what sort of bond Queen Victoria and her closest confidant actually shared. The majority of documents relating to the Munshi and his queen, their personal correspondences and letters have been destroyed. However, historian Shrabani Basu manages to put together an account from history that reads very much like a story. Presented in chronological order, it describes events from the time when Abdul Karim first set foot in England up until the last chapter where he finds himself back in Agra after the Queen’s death, 13 years later.
What did I like about the book?
1. The book is enriched by historical maps of India, a family tree of the Queen, and timelines that help readers grasp events outlined in the book.
2. The fact that there is a 360-degree view on the matter of the relationship between two human beings further enriches the narrative. Basu writes about other events that take place alongside the central relationship in the book which is its main focus.
3. The writing flows well and there is not one chapter that ends abruptly.
4. The language is flawless
5. The author does not merely compile a story from the forgotten pages of history but presents it in a neat package without loose ends and/or the sharing of personal opinions.
6. I particularly loved the chapter that discusses the Indian princes, their wives, and how the Queen treats them when they visit. The movie makes it seem that Abdul and his stout friend were the only Indian servants in the palace but the book makes it clear that there were in fact, several Indian attendants who were all the Queen’s favorite servants.
We really get to know the old Queen on a somewhat personal level through this book. It paints a picture of the kind of woman she really was.
I have read other well-researched works by historians but none were as engaging as Victoria and Abdul by Shrabani Basu who really draws the reader in with her flawless presentation and packaging of facts into a linear tale. I think every Indian and English person ought to read this book. All in all, I am quite astounded at the fact that so much has been hidden away for so long. How easily the victors re-write a country’s history by deciding what should and should not be a part of the textbooks. We need more such stories to come to the light and I’m glad Shrabani Basu took it upon herself to bring out this particular story.
It was not until I was invited to a screening of the film Victoria and Abdul by Bloomsbury Publishing, India that I was presented with an unbelievable true story. Victoria and Abdul by Shrabani Basu is a part of my Non-fiction November reading list. It’s a well-researched account of the 13 years Abdul Karim spent in the presence of Queen Victoria as her Munshi or personal instructor. The book reads like a novel that’s substantiated by reports in the form of facts and excerpts from original documents. Victoria and Abdul is an eye-opener to the personal life of Queen Victoria in the last decade of her reign as the Empress of India. Through this insightful work, Basu gives us an intimate glimpse into the household affairs of the most powerful woman on earth, at the time.
The work is enhanced by the inclusion of black and white photographs, paintings, and archival documents such as newspaper articles which really make this book an interesting read.
Queen Victoria never had the chance to travel to India but she was always enamored by its people and culture. Extremely proud was she to bear the title of Empress of India and rule a country that was 3000 miles away. Abdul Karim gives the aging Queen Victoria the companionship she needed during the last years of her life that many within her own family and household failed to provide. Karim taught her Hindustani (Urdu) in the course of 13 years and updated her with the political scenario in India at the time. She trusted him fully and treated him as far more than a servant which spurned jealously and ill feeling among Indian servants and the household at large.
Nobody understood what Queen Victoria saw in her beloved “Munshi”. They utterly failed to grasp this relationship which was beyond class, caste, color, and language.
Historians and us can only speculate what sort of bond Queen Victoria and her closest confidant actually shared. The majority of documents relating to the Munshi and his queen, their personal correspondences and letters have been destroyed. However, historian Shrabani Basu manages to put together an account from history that reads very much like a story. Presented in chronological order, it describes events from the time when Abdul Karim first set foot in England up until the last chapter where he finds himself back in Agra after the Queen’s death, 13 years later.
What did I like about the book?
1. The book is enriched by historical maps of India, a family tree of the Queen, and timelines that help readers grasp events outlined in the book.
2. The fact that there is a 360-degree view on the matter of the relationship between two human beings further enriches the narrative. Basu writes about other events that take place alongside the central relationship in the book which is its main focus.
3. The writing flows well and there is not one chapter that ends abruptly.
4. The language is flawless
5. The author does not merely compile a story from the forgotten pages of history but presents it in a neat package without loose ends and/or the sharing of personal opinions.
6. I particularly loved the chapter that discusses the Indian princes, their wives, and how the Queen treats them when they visit. The movie makes it seem that Abdul and his stout friend were the only Indian servants in the palace but the book makes it clear that there were in fact, several Indian attendants who were all the Queen’s favorite servants.
We really get to know the old Queen on a somewhat personal level through this book. It paints a picture of the kind of woman she really was.
I have read other well-researched works by historians but none were as engaging as Victoria and Abdul by Shrabani Basu who really draws the reader in with her flawless presentation and packaging of facts into a linear tale. I think every Indian and English person ought to read this book. All in all, I am quite astounded at the fact that so much has been hidden away for so long. How easily the victors re-write a country’s history by deciding what should and should not be a part of the textbooks. We need more such stories to come to the light and I’m glad Shrabani Basu took it upon herself to bring out this particular story.