A Book Review
This vibrant tale of growing up in princely India is unlike any other memoir in that it is so totally without personal points of reference for the reader. You never get that flash of recognition: oh yes, as a child I used to ritually behead a goat just like that! Or: how like the elephant I had as a pram when I was little! When Narendra Sigh, the heir to the tiny princedom of Sarila in central India, was first asked his name by a school teacher, he did not know how to answer; no one had asked who he was before. This description of a dusty princedom in the 1920s and 30s seems centuries away.