Empire Made: My Search for an Outlaw Uncle Who Vanished in British India, Hardcover

Descriere

The shadowy story of a nineteenth-century English gentleman who went to India and dramatically cut all ties to home, forming a relationship with a local Muslim man In 1841 at the age of twenty, Nigel Halleck set out for Calcutta as a clerk in the service of the East India Company. But he didn't settle into a long life as a bureaucrat during the Raj. After eight years serving in the name of empire, Nigel abruptly left the Company under a cloud and disappeared, stoking a family mystery that would reverberate through generations. Kief Hillsbery, Nigel's nephew many times removed, spent decades researching and traveling in his long-lost relation's footsteps in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nepal. He initially set out to solve the question of his family's black sheep, only to find a fascinating slice of hidden gay history. He discovered evidence of Nigel living happily with a Muslim companion, an exiled Afghan prince, as a permanent houseguest of a highborn Hindu in Kathmandu until his death. Empire Made is the fascinating re-creation Nigel's life and times as well as one man's search for and connection to a very personal past.