Farthest Field by Raghu Karnad Book Launch at Taj Krishna, Hyderabad

Praise for the book
"From the very first page it is the brilliance of the writing that stands out... The imaginative power, intelligence and descriptive richness of a narrative that, again and again, startles by its originality before convincing by its utter fitness."
David Crane in the Spectator

"A spectacular first book... He writes with the imaginative gift of a first-rate novelist in order to deliver the truth." Juliet Nicolson in the Telegraph (UK)

"I have not lately read a finer book than this - on any subject at all... A book that will long survive, I suspect, as a masterpiece." Simon Winchester in the New Statesman

"One of India's most brilliant and talented young writers."

William Dalrymple in the New Statesman
"Both a poignant memorial to his lost family and a gripping account of how India contributed to the Allied victory and sowed the seeds of its independence."

Ian Critchley in the Sunday Times

"With consummate skill he creates startling graphic images that fix in our minds all that he sees, interprets and discovers... It is not only a thinking book. It is also a profoundly feeling book." Shanta Gokhale in the Mumbai Mirror

About the book
The photographs of three young men had stood in his grandmother's house for as long as he could remember, beheld but never fully noticed. They had all fought in the Second World War, a fact that surprised him. Indians had never figured in his idea of the war, nor the war in his idea of India. One of them, Bobby, even looked a bit like him, but Raghu Karnad had not noticed until he was the same age as they were in their photo frames. Then he learned about the Parsi boy from the sleepy south Indian coast, so eager to follow his brothers-in-law into the colonial forces and onto the front line. Manek, dashing and confident, was a pilot with India's fledgling air force; gentle Ganny became an army doctor in the arid North-West Frontier. Bobby's pursuit would carry him as far as the deserts of Iraq and the green hell of the Burma battlefront.