Exclusive interview with author Alex Rutherford and a review of his new novel about the Moghul emperors of India
Rating: Three Stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
“We traveled everywhere we could associated with the story from Persia [present day Iran],” says A Kingdom Divided author Alex Rutherford. “Where Humayun fled… to the Sher Mandal, his observatory in Delhi where he used to climb to the roof to consult the stars and down whose steps he fell at the end of his life. Like Humayun we sailed down the Ganges.”
A Kingdom Divided is the second book in Rutherford’s Empire of the Moghul series. This historical thriller has lots of action. Humayan, an opium addict, keeps forgiving his treacherous siblings. While foolish on his part, it makes for quite a story. Rutherford writes with descriptive detail that will keep you very engaged.
A Kingdom Divided is about the young emperor Humayun, a warrior and dreamer. Crowned in 1530, he wants to make the Moghuls legendary, and to build on his father’s wealth, glory, and extend an empire that reaches past the Khyber Pass…. But he has to contend with his half brothers who plot against him. He loses almost everything his ancestors fought to gain, but Humayun doesn’t give up. He fights his way back.
“His story is as full of high drama, tragedy, pathos and romance as anything you’d find in Shakespeare,” says Rutherford. “His dynasty is tainted by the poison of jealousy seeping corrosively down through the generations. The Moghuls’ story is a vicious circle of sons plotting against fathers, brothers murdering brothers and half-brothers and of empresses and would-be empresses plotting, scheming and seducing.”
For research, Rutherford drew on the research done for his non-fiction book about the building of the Taj Mahal called A Teardrop on the Cheek of Time in the UK and Taj Mahal in the U.S.
“We read research by other writers and historians into aspects of Moghul history from military strategy to customs in the harem to food of the period and spent many hours in Oxford University’s Indian Institute Library,” says Rutherford. “Our chief focus was on original source material and we are fortunate there is so much. The Moghuls weren’t modest. Some of the emperors wrote their own accounts and almost all employed court chroniclers.”
“We also have the Akbarnama written by Abul Fazl, the chronicler of Humayun’s son Akbar which covers Humayun’s reign,” says Rutherford. “These sources capture superbly the physical and emotional detail of the Moghul period. They convey the sheer excitement of events as they unfold and burst with compelling, exuberant stories not only about great battles and the passions of family politics but more intimate things like the emperor’s concubines.”
Rutherford even tracked down a restaurant in Old Delhi run by descendants of the imperial court cooks of the Moghuls. “It was amazing to taste the dishes the emperors tasted and to think of the history behind them.”
In India their book a Kingdom Divided, was the fourth best-selling fiction work of 2010. “We’ve done some great publicity tours there that have helped us gain yet further insights through people whose families have some connection with the story.”
Rutherford is actually a writing team, Londoner Diana Preston and Michael Preston who was born in the northwest of England. They’re based in London when not traveling. Currently they’re working on books three and four of the Moghul series. They’re also working on a non-fiction book about Britain’s first military expedition into Afghanistan in the middle of the 19th century called The Dark Defile.
A Kingdom Divided: Empire of the Moghul author Alex Rutherford. Hardcover, 448 pages, Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books (July 5, 2011), Language: English, ISBN: 9780312597016
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