Review: Brothers at War

REVIEW

Brothers at War
By Alex Rutherford
Headline Review,

427 pages, Rs 495

Blurb

The second enthralling installment in Alex Rutherford's Empire of the Moghul series. 1530, Agra, Northern India. Humayun, the newly-crowned second Moghul Emperor, is a fortunate man. His father, Babur, has bequeathed him wealth, glory and an empire which stretches a thousand miles south from the Khyber pass; he must now build on his legacy, and make the Moghuls worthy of their forebear, Tamburlaine. But, unbeknown to him, Humayun is already in grave danger. His half-brothers are plotting against him; they doubt that he has the strength, the will, the brutality needed to command the Moghul armies and lead them to still-greater glories. Perhaps they are right. Soon Humayun will be locked in a terrible battle: not only for his crown, not only for his life, but for the existence of the very empire itself.

Bring on Akbar Mint

A few chapters into the first book in the Empire of the Moghul trilogy, Raiders from the North, and I was hooked. And a little embarrassed for it. If a review request hadn’t been forthcoming, I would have never ever picked up a copy of Alex Rutherford’s debut. I am not a snob by any means, and I have the Ludlums to prove it, but period fiction just isn’t my cup of tea.

If I want to immerse myself in period literature, why not choose a well-written history? And if I must read fiction, why not pick up something like Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland or even the Fake IPL Player’s book? Both fictional but within an identifiable context.

Period fiction requires two leaps of my imagination. My imagination, I was under the impression, was not so leapy. And then I read the excellent ‘Raiders from the North’. And I leapt verily!

That book was an engaging, well-balanced work that told the story of Babar’s impossible rise to power and the genesis of the Mughal empire. The book had a certain cinematic heft to it, with a TV documentary-like treatment of the dramatic and the historic. In that context it was also a book that went well with the contemporary need to dramatize history. Big budget TV series such as The Tudors, Band of Brothers and the more recent The Pacific all explain spans of history through the feelings, lusts, fears and thrills of their protagonists.

Not with maps and relics, but with sex and savagery

‘It was fun to create a new identity'

In India for the launch of the second book in the Empire of the Moghul series, author Diana Preston - one half of Alex Rutherford- holds forth on psuedonyms, India and the perils of research trips.

When the first book in the Empire of the Moghul series, Raiders from the North, came out, the first thing I did was to check the back flap for more information on the author. Nothing except a vague phrase “Alex Rutherford lives in London”. A Google search revealed that Alex Rutherford was actually the husband-wife team of Michael and Diana Preston and that Empire of the Moghul series was their first stab at historical fiction.

Other books as co-authors include A Pirate of Exquisite Mind (on the English buccaneer, sea captain, author and scientific observer William Dampier), Cleopatra and Antony and two books on the Taj Mahal (A Teardrop on the Cheek of Time and Taj Mahal).

Diana also has The Road to Culloden Moor (on Bonnie Prince Charlie); A First Rate Tragedy (on Robert Scott and his ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic), The Boxer Rebellion (on China's war against foreigners in 1900) and Lusitania (on the 1915 sinking of the Lusitania), and Before the Fallout (from Marie Curie to the bombing of Hiroshima) to her credit.

Full report here Hindu

On the trail of the great Mughals

The readers who enjoyed Alex Rutherford’s Raiders of the North, a work of historical fiction on Babur, would probably have conjured up an idea of what the author might look like. But few would have known that Alex Rutherford is actually the pen name for the husband-wife team of Diana and Michael Preston, who have authored several books of non-fiction, including one on the Taj Mahal. They were both in Delhi for the launch of the second book of their quintet on the Mughal emperors. Excerpts from an interview with Diana Preston.

Why the pseudonym Alex Rutherford? 
We decided to have a pseudonym on the advice of agents and publishers. They said that we’ve spent the last decade writing non-fiction books and if we were to have a change in direction writing historical fiction, to avoid confusing readers we should find a new name. They also seemed keen that it should be a single rather than a double name. We thought we could get around that by having an androgynous first name. So we chose Alex. And then we thought of something that would go nicely with that and would sound quite robust. We chose Rutherford because we are both admirers of Ernest Rutherford, the New Zealand scientist. I’m afraid we stole his surname.

Full interview here TOI Crest