Stanley A. Wolpert (1927–2019)

I read this book almost in one sitting. While I am emotionally tied to the events that lead up to the partition of India, I was not aware of all the facts. Stanley Wolpert has done a remarkable job of sifting through the material, and bringing this period of India's history to life.

It is not one where the ghosts of the participants of the saga would rest well in peace. The drama of a million people being killed, many thousands displaced, and the commencement of the journey of hate between show more two countries is well documented. So is the role and the avarice, ambition, stupidity and ignorance of the players who brought this about.

An indispensable read for anyone who wants to know about the last few years leading up to the partition of India. show less

It is a debatable point when a book is classified as an historical novel, rather than a piece of contemporary fiction that is merely old enough to called that because of age. Since this novel deals with an act of political assassination, carried out in the past, that in my mind it has become an historical novel. Ghandi was killed January 30, 1948. We enter the mind of the assassin Nathuram Godse, a hindu ultra Nationalist, and watch him slip through the relatively lax web of security to show more acomplish his end. The book is tense, and well written. It was banned by the government of India. show less

This was a dense, slow but very informative read. Some people don't like these sort of books but I enjoy to have one that takes some time to get through and that is exactly what this was.

Wolpert was very exacting in his detail and sometimes the result was not very flattering for the Mahatma. Either way, I enjoyed seeing a more human side to this revered historical figure.

A short but probably the best summarization of this seemingly intractable conundrum. What a 300 page tome could not achieve, this book has done so eloquently. Very succinct, witty, funny and objective, even O'Reilly could not have done better had it attempted to take on this topic.