Freedom At Midnight

Freedom At Midnight by Dominique Lapierre Larry Collins
The end of an empire. The birth of two nations. Seventy
years ago at midnight on August 14 1947 the Union Jack
began its final journey down the flagstaff of Viceroy’s
House New Delhi. A fifth of humanity claimed their
independence from the greatest empire history has ever
seen—but the price of freedom was high as a nation erupted
into riots and bloodshed partition and war. Freedom at
Midnight is the true story of the events surrounding
Indian independence beginning with the appointment of Lord
Mountbatten of Burma as the last Viceroy of British India
and ending with the assassination and funeral of Mahatma
Gandhi. The book was an international bestseller and
achieved enormous acclaim in the United States Italy Spain
and France. “There is no single passage in this profoundly
researched book that one could actually fault. Having been
there most of the time in question and having assisted at
most of the encounters I can vouch for the accuracy of its
general mood. It is a work of scholarship of investigation
research and of significance.” —James Cameron The New York
Sunday Times “Freedom at Midnight is a panoramic
spectacular of a book that reads more like sensational
fiction than like history even though it is all true…..
The narrative is as lively as informative and as richly
detailed as a maharaja’s palace.” —Judson Hand The New
York Daily News “Outrageously and endlessly fascinating is
my awestruck reaction to Freedom at Midnight. The new
sure-to-be bestseller by Larry Collins and Dominique
Lapierre. It is all here: maharajas and tigers filth and
squalor extravagance and macabre sex massacres smells
starvation cruelty and heroism. Collins and Lapierre have
made human history breathtaking and heartbreaking.”
—Margaret Manning The Boston Globe “No subject I thought
as I picked up Freedom at Midnight could be of less
interest to me than a story of how Independence came to
India after three centuries of British rule. I opened the
book and began to flip through the photographs: here was a
picture of Gandhi dressed in his loincloth going to have
tea with the King of England; there was a picture of a
maharaja being measured against his weight in gold; and
another of thousands of vultures devouring corpses in the
street. I began to read fascinated. Here was the whole
chronicle illustrated with anecdotes and masterful
character sketches of how the British had come to India
how they had ruled it and how finally compelled by the
force of economics and history they had been forced to
leave it divided…… Collins and Lapierre are such good
writers that their books are so interesting that they are
impossible to put down.” —J.M. Sanchez The Houston
Chronicle