In Search of Amrit Kaur

An Indian Princess in Wartime Paris

By: Livia Manera Sambuy, Todd Portnowitz

Narrated by: Christina Cole

Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

As she builds her own life anew, an Italian writer embarks on an all-consuming search for the true story of the mysterious princess H. H. Amrit Kaur of Mandi.

On a sweltering summer day in 2007, having just lost her brother to illness, Livia Manera Sambuy finds herself standing before a 1924 photograph of a stunningly elegant Indian princess at a museum in Mumbai. What's written in the caption will change her life forever. This gorgeous Punjabi princess, it's said, sold her jewels in occupied Paris to save Jewish lives, only to be arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp, where she died within a year.

Could it be true? And if so, how could such a sensational story have gone unnoticed? Instinctively, almost viscerally, Manera becomes entangled in the mystery, losing herself in the history of the British Raj, in the diamonds and sapphires of the twentieth-century aristocracy, in the Circus Balls and Jubilees, and in the lives of extraordinary figures such as the Maharaja Jagatjit Singh of Kapurthala, the Jewish banker Albert Kahn, and the Russian explorer Nicholas Roerich—all in a decades-long pursuit of the elusive Amrit Kaur.

When she rendezvouses with the princess's eighty-year-old daughter, Manera's search takes on a new dimension as she strives to reconnect an orphan with the mother who abandoned her in 1933, leaving behind her two children, her raja husband, and a legacy of activism in India's women's civil rights movement.

In Search of Amrit Kaur is an engrossing detective story, a kaleidoscopic history lesson and a moving portrait of women, across the century, seeking personal freedom.

©2023 Livia Manera Sambuy (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"Livia Manera is a wonderful detective-companion to lead us through this rich and complex world of princesses and prisoners of war, love and deceit, secrets and discovery...a thoroughly engaging read." (Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire)

"Nuanced but relentlessly curious, Livia Manera Sambuy has a gift not only for listening to other people's stories but for probing and unfolding exceptional narratives. In Search of Amrit Kaur - an ambitious, absorbing work that peels back the layers of its enigmatic subject and digs deeply into the author's own emotional vicissitudes - is her crowning jewel" (Jhumpa Lahiri, author of Whereabouts)

"An intimate and engrossing portrait of an extraordinary woman by a writer whose sense of story and place is perfect in every way." (John Zubrzycki, author of The House of Jaipur)