This fascinating, vivid, and unforgettable book is a work of history which reads like a novel!

Princess Sophia Duleep Singh could have easily spent a quiet and lavish life in London, owing to the generosity of her godmother, Queen Victoria. However, when Ms. Anand opens with the prologue depicting Sophia at a suffragette meeting, we know her life as a political activist is anything but a quiet existence.

Princess Sophia was thoroughly British. And yet, she was also Indian. Her father—who was crowned king as a young child—had to sign his kingdom over to the British Empire. This part of the story, the downfall of the brave Sikh empire because of a few traitors was sad to read. It was also sad to read how Duleep Singh's life ended the way it did.

This book, however, focuses on Sophia. Anand provides exceptionally vivid accounts of the opposition from the government and police brutality that the women had to battle in order to be given the right to vote. There are also horrific descriptions of how women who went on hunger strikes were roughly force-fed by the authorities to keep them alive.

This book is meticulously researched and passionately written. Anita Anand certainly deserved winning the Eastern Eye Alchemy Festival Award for Literature for this! I would recommend it to anyone interested in women’s history, colonialism, or the women’s suffrage movement.