Nayantara Sahgal is one of India's best-known writers and thinkers. She is the recipient of the Sinclair Prize for Fiction, the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. A member of the Sahitya Akademi's advisory board for English till she resigned during the Emergency, Sahgal served on the jury of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1990 and 1991. She has held fellowships in the United States at the Bunting Institute, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the National Humanities Center. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was awarded an honorary doctorate in literature by the University of Leeds in 1997. She is associated with the founding of the People's Union for Civil Liberties and served as its vice-president during the 1980s.
'Seldom does one get a chance to become acquainted with India's great leaders through a young woman so intimately associated with them.' -New York Times Book Review A dramatic portrait of the spirit of sacrifice that carried India through the years of the struggle for independence, this evocative memoir of an unusual childhood ends with the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948. Nayantara Sahgal describes what it was like growing up in Anand Bhavan, Allahabad, the home of her parents shared with her maternal uncle, Jawarlal Nehru, during the years when Gandhi was leading the movement for independence. It describes in loving detail the lives of a family for whom the country's fight for freedom was more important than anything else, certainly coming before comfort and riches. The book is particularly delightful for its picture of Nehru who springs from these pages as a man of friendly humanity and a joy in life that made him a beloved uncle, yet with an inborn greatness that inspired awe and admiration in the little girl who played with him. 'She is brilliant...complex and questioning.' - Pearl S. Buck
