The year is 1947, and yet the momentous events of that turbulent time register only as distant thunder to Leela, the raja’s 13-year-old granddaughter. Like an older sister of Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird, or Leo in The Go-Between, Leela’s ambivalent age—not quite child, not yet grown-up—makes her an interesting player. Shivani manages almost flawlessly to capture her oscillation between precocious princess and frightened kid in a narrative pacy enough to sustain the momentum of a true whodunit yet rich in descriptive detail about the decadent courtly life of rajas and their ranis:...

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