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A review by robinwalter
An Unholy Drought by Madhulika Liddle
emotional
informative
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
The second book in the Delhi Quartet series this was a big read. A lot of action-packed history brought down to size by personalising it through the medium of a family chronicle.
What I really loved about this book was its authenticity. A very clear-eyed view of the reality of life in an age before modern medicine, when the frailty and uncertainty of life was starkly obvious, especially for the poor. At the same time, the author wove a story that was often very entertaining as well - elements that reminded me of The Count of Monte Cristo combined with historical details and a focus on the role of influential women that brought back to mind the excellent nonfiction work Daughters of the Sun: Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire by Ira Mukhoty. That one of the primary narrators was a calligrapher working (presumably) in Nastaliq, a script whose beauty I drool over despite not being able to decipher a single alif, certainly didn't hurt either.
I did feel that it was perhaps a touch long by the end. So many characters to keep track of and so many passing years made parsing it all a bit of a challenge. That my Kindle edition came without chapter breaks and included a typographical error that caused temporal confusion was emphatically not the author's fault, but did add to the mental work involved in keeping up. And from this old brony's point of view, allowing at least one of the narrator characters to have had a relatively uncomplicated happy romantic life might have added kuch meethi to the abundance of kuch khatti. Those minor niggles aside, If you enjoy real history presented through the eyes of characters who feel like real peope, do give this one a try.
What I really loved about this book was its authenticity. A very clear-eyed view of the reality of life in an age before modern medicine, when the frailty and uncertainty of life was starkly obvious, especially for the poor. At the same time, the author wove a story that was often very entertaining as well - elements that reminded me of The Count of Monte Cristo combined with historical details and a focus on the role of influential women that brought back to mind the excellent nonfiction work Daughters of the Sun: Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire by Ira Mukhoty. That one of the primary narrators was a calligrapher working (presumably) in Nastaliq, a script whose beauty I drool over despite not being able to decipher a single alif, certainly didn't hurt either.
I did feel that it was perhaps a touch long by the end. So many characters to keep track of and so many passing years made parsing it all a bit of a challenge. That my Kindle edition came without chapter breaks and included a typographical error that caused temporal confusion was emphatically not the author's fault, but did add to the mental work involved in keeping up. And from this old brony's point of view, allowing at least one of the narrator characters to have had a relatively uncomplicated happy romantic life might have added kuch meethi to the abundance of kuch khatti. Those minor niggles aside, If you enjoy real history presented through the eyes of characters who feel like real peope, do give this one a try.