Updated:
April 09, 2021 13:15 IST
The book is filled with period detail, with the sights, sounds and smells of Shahjahanabad spilling out of every page of this historical thriller
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The book is filled with period detail, with the sights, sounds and smells of Shahjahanabad spilling out of every page of this historical thriller
The year 1857 catches at our collective imagination: the heroic, doomed endeavour, the mix of high and low who joined the fight for freedom, the horrific reprisals.
Murder at the Mushaira begins on the moonlit night of May 2, 1857, with a messenger galloping to Delhi carrying a letter for the rebels, a posse of East India Company soldiers in hot pursuit. It ends in September with the uprising’s defeat and a whole city, its traditions and way of life, systematically dismembered.
Mirza Ghalib on the trail of a murder gloriously powers this gripping work of historical fiction
Characters both real and imaginary bring 19th century Delhi to life. Manisha Yadav
In this work of fiction set in Delhi of 1857, just before the start of Ghadar or the first War of Independence, the very first thing that piques your interest is its title,
Murder at the Mushaira. And when you are told that the poet laureate Mirza Asadullah Khan “Ghalib”
is the main protagonist of this murder mystery where he is going to investigate a murder, you’re practically committed.
A grand mushaira has been organised at the palatial house of a Delhi nobleman, attended by the crème de la crème
Born in Azamgarh and raised in Gorakhpur, Faruqi was a chief postmaster-general and member of the Postal Services Board in New Delhi until 1994.
Part of the first batch of the BA programme at Maharana Pratap College in Gorakhpur, he pursued a Master’s degree in English from Allahabad University in 1955. Although he topped the university, he did not receive a first-class, which he thought was probably because “he asked too many questions, or did not dress in the three-piece suits”.
He had chosen to work on a doctorate in English symbolism and the influence of French literature, and poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan was assigned as his supervisor. But after Bachchan came down heavily on him for missing a meeting, Faruqi did not return to pursue his doctorate, he had said in an interview.