Winner of the 2018 American Bookfest Best Book Award for Historical Fiction Shortlisted for the 2018 GOETHE Book Awards for Post-1750s Historic Fiction Shortlisted for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Award Grand Prize Finalist for the 2018 International Book Award for Historical FictionLucknow in 1856 is the most opulent city in India. If the English take it over, the royal family and centuries of rich, cosmopolitan culture will disappear. Amah, personal bodyguard to the King, wants to make sure this doesn't happen. Ex-Queen, Hazrat Mahal, has the money to fortify against the English. Both women are daughters of African slaves who have grown in wealth and power thanks to the reign of the Indian royal family in Lucknow. The English are a small number, compared to the native population in the city, but Lucknow has never known war. When the women decide to take on the English colonists who declare rule, what will be the ultimate price of the women's loyalty to the royal family and to the place they've grown to love?Amah and the Silk-Winged Pigeons draws on the lost histories of the women descended from African slaves who resisted English rule during the 1857 uprising in Lucknow, India. The book is about the event that triggered Queen Victoria's reign in India for almost a century, and illuminates new and important female, Muslim perspectives on what has been called the first war of Indian independence.

Ce roman raconte avec style et perspicacité l'histoire ignorée des femmes indiennes d'ascendance africaine qui ont participé à la grande rébellion de 1857 contre les forces britanniques à Lucknow, cité royale cosmopolite et prospère du Nord-Est indien. Cette révolte est aujourd'hui considérée comme étant la première guerre d'indépendance de l'Inde.

In 1858, the British took over the city of Lucknow, paving the way for Queen Victoria's reign over India. But what happened to Begam Hazrat Mahal, the woman of African-Indian descent who had valiantly organized a final key resistance to British rule, and to her ex-husband, Wajid 'Ali Shah, the last King in India, who remained imprisoned by the British? The Envy of Paradise tells their stories. Jocelyn Cullity's English family lived in India for five generations. A sequel to the award-winning Amah & the Silk-Winged Pigeons, her second novel about the takeover of India by Britain is an exquisitely told tale of 19th-century India-a deep rendering of the moment that India as a country was colonized; a brilliant illustration of Hazrat Mahal's fearless character and the depths of betrayal the last King in India faced.