History and Mystery Reads

Rating: 7/10

• Accuracy: Rich on British India and Afghanistan in the 1850s–70s, culminating in the real 1879 siege of the British Residency in Kabul.
• Readability: Sweeping and romantic, easy to read despite its length.
• Plot: An English boy raised as a Hindu grows up torn between two worlds, falls in love with an Indian princess, and serves as a British officer.

Ashton Pelham-Martyn is born in India to British parents. After their deaths, he is raised by his Hindu nurse, Sita, and grows up believing he is Indian. Later he is sent to England, returns as a British officer, and finds himself caught between loyalties. He falls in love with Anjuli, a princess he knew as a child.

M.M. Kaye was born in India and loved it, and the novel is full of affection for its landscapes, cultures and people. The book is an epic romance, with journeys, battles, palaces and a forbidden love story.

The climax is the siege of the British Residency in Kabul in 1879, in which the British mission was massacred. Kaye’s description of the siege is gripping and well researched.

The novel’s portrayal of Indian characters is more sympathetic than many earlier British novels, but it is still romanticised, and its view of the Raj is often nostalgic. Some episodes rely on melodrama.

The 7 reflects an absorbing and heartfelt epic, a bestseller that became a television miniseries in 1984. It is best enjoyed as a romance shaped by history rather than as a critical study of empire.