Interview with Alan McKee, author of Lucknow: Shadows Of Empire
Lucknow Shadows of Empire is a love story and a mystery set in what was once the most beautiful and exotic city on earth, Lucknow, in northern India, a place famous for its music, art and architecture. Famed throughout Asia for its talented and carefully trained courtesans, Lucknow, city of pleasure, was the home of the fantastically wealthy Nawabs, rulers of the city. It was also the site of one of the bloodiest sieges of India’s attempt to throw off British rule. We remember watching a documentary about that horrible incident. What is your story about? In his last year at Oxford, Henry receives a journal that belonged to his mother during the Indian war of independence. As the reader follows the events of the past, Henry finds himself entangled in a frightening present when his rooms at college are broken into and he is attacked in public by two strangers. He is expelled, without explanation, from college for refusing to hand over his mother’s journal. Then, his foster father is killed and Henry finds himself caught up in a web of murder and theft, pitted against the terrifying Thuggee, a cult of murderers whose victims numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Why these killers have come to England and why they are pursuing him, Henry cannot guess. Not even Sergeant Abdul, a former British agent, can guess at what is motivating the cult of murderers. We thought you said this was also a love story? The pair try to stay alive with the cult of murderers at their heels. What kind of readers will this book appeal to? What kind of man is Henry? Have you written any other books that we should read next? Then, try reading The Iron Beast which is set during the railway mania of the 1840s and which shows how the development of the British rail system foreshadows our own century. All books about British history. Do you have a website where we can keep up with your work? What’s next? |
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