In Search of Amrit Kaur
A Lost Princess and Her Vanished World
by Livia Manera Sambuy
translated by Todd Portnowitz
Farrar, Straus and Giroux : 14 March 2023 : 352 pp. : 9780374106010
As she builds her own life anew, an Italian writer embarks on an all-consuming search for the true story of the mysterious princess H. H. Amrit Kaur of Mandi.
On a sweltering day in 2007, having just lost her brother to illness, Livia Manera Sambuy finds herself standing before a 1924 photograph of a stunningly elegant Indian princess at a museum in Mumbai. What’s written in the caption will change her life forever. This gorgeous Punjabi princess, it’s said, sold her jewels in occupied Paris to save Jewish lives, only to be arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp, where she died within a year.
Could it be true? And if so, how could such a sensational story have gone unnoticed? Instinctively, almost viscerally, Sambuy becomes entangled in the mystery, losing herself in the history of the British Raj, in the diamonds and sapphires of the twentieth-century aristocracy, in the Circus Balls and Jubilees, and in the lives of extraordinary figures such as the Maharaja Jagatjit Singh of Kapurthala, the Jewish banker Albert Kahn, and the Russian explorer Nicholas Roerich—all in a decades-long pursuit of the elusive Amrit Kaur.
When she rendezvouses with the princess’s eighty-year-old daughter, Sambuy’s search takes on a new dimension, as she strives to reconnect an orphan with the mother who abandoned her in 1933, leaving behind her two children, her raja husband, and a legacy of activism in India’s women’s civil rights movement.
In Search of Amrit Kaur is an engrossing detective story, a kaleidoscopic history lesson, and a moving portrait of women, across the century, seeking personal freedom.
Praise for In Search of Amrit Kaur
"Nuanced but relentlessly curious, Livia Manera Sambuy has a gift not only for listening to other people’s stories but for probing and unfolding exceptional narratives. In Search of Amrit Kaur—an ambitious, absorbing work that peels back the layers of its enigmatic subject and digs deeply into the author’s own emotional vicissitudes, is her crowning jewel." —Jhumpa Lahiri, author of Whereabouts
"A luminous portrait of Amrit Kaur first beguiled Livia Manera in a dusty museum in Mumbai, and became an obsession. This beautiful Indian princess, she learned, had escaped her family, leaving behind an unfaithful husband, young children, and a feudal world where the reward for a woman's submission was unimaginable privilege. It took Manera years to reconstruct her story, and at every stage, on several continents, mysteries and obfuscations thwarted her. The truth, when she finally discovered it, came as a shock, and a revelation. And the result of her quest is an even more luminous portrait—of both Amrit Kaur, and Livia Manera—two exceptional women who had to question their assigned fates as daughters, wives, lovers, and mothers in order to define themselves." —Judith Thurman, author of A Left-Handed Woman
"Livia Manera Sambuy is a wonderful detective-companion to lead us through this rich and complex world of princesses and prisoners-of-war, love and deceit, secrets and discovery. Teeming with incident and character, In Search of Amrit Kaur is a thoroughly engaging read." —Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire
"An intimate and engrossing portrait of an extraordinary woman by a writer whose sense of story and place is perfect in every way." —John Zubrzycki, author of The House of Jaipur
"Part personal odyssey, part history, part detective story, In Search of Amrit Kaur is a vivid and intriguing account of the quest - spanning three continents - to uncover the story of a tragic Indian princess." —Katie Hickman, author of She-Merchants, Buccaneers and Gentlewomen
"A remarkable book about an extraordinary woman . . . impossible to put down. It offers a rare window into a vanished and exotic world." —Rudrangshu Mukherjee, author of Nehru & Rose