Empire Made: My Search for an Outlaw Uncle Who Vanished in British India

This work is a bit of a hybrid between narrative nonfiction and memoir. The story toggles back and forth between the past and the present and the author does a supremely good job of making that interesting and both parts of the story relevant to each other. That is not an easy trick. The story starts in the present with the author learning about one of his family members who worked for the East India Company starting in 1840 and after being employed with them for ten years disappeared. The family kept some of his letters and artifacts, but essentially he dropped off the family map. The author makes a trip to Nepal as a student in the 1970's and since he was intrigued by the story of this lost family member begins a decades long show more investigation that takes him deep into the history of India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Afghanistan. The history that is inside the very readable volume is so relevant to the present that it should be read for that reason alone. However, the truth is that the author just has written a good story and managed the trick of making it relevant as well. So read it because it is just a good story. The narrator for the recorded version was very good and that enhanced the basic story. This one made my best of the year list! More people should be reading this one. show less

~ review copy provided

Adventure, Mystery, and History... what's not to like.

I really enjoyed Hillsbery's book. His writing is so good and so clear, it was a pleasure to tag along as he tried to decipher what happened to that errant British great-great-many-times-removed uncle of his. The one that was born in 1822. The one who went off to India to work for the great East India Company. And the one who gave up a very promi$ing career when he vanished.

Was he murdered by Thugees or eaten by a tiger? As we start we really haven't a clue.

No small part of what made EMPIRE MADE a pleasure was that Hillsbery juxtaposed his Uncle Nigel's history as he moved about the region, with his own person travels as he visited the same locales. Kief show more visited museums and libraries, monuments and graveyards looking for clues, or at least looking for the dead man's remains.

And our author could do this because many of Nigel's letters home survived the years and remained in his family's keeping. And what can I say, these letters are wonderful preservers of the past. And through them we can see the East as Victoria's countrymen did. The enlightened, and the less enlightened.

And fantastically, Nigel knew important people. Rajah's and dignitaries. Men such the clever and exceptional Lawrence. And because Nigel knew people I got a wonderful history lesson about the struggles of the region. Really, a good deal of Indian, Afghani, Sikh, Nepalese, history is crammed into this book and you'll hardly notice as the whole arm chair adventure is made relevant by the historical background.

A really good read. show less

Interesting and smooth flowing this dual passage trough India to Nepal is not involving. A young man's inquiries spread over 3 decades for traces of a relative well over one hundred years dead reveals nothing of the inner life of either traveler. But there is an abundance of information about 19th century colonial India, well presented.