<p>'India: A Portrait', which was released recently, describes how India evolved into a prominent nation of enormous promise and achievement despite having great contradictions and conflicts in the post-Independence era.<br /><br />The author's first book 'Liberty or Death: India's Journey to Independence and Division', published in 1997, offered a radical reinterpretation of the events surrounding India's independence and partition.<br /><br />The first book, French said, was essentially about how and why the freedom struggle developed the way it did and why it ended with the political settlement.<br /><br />"But the new book is about what India is at this moment and the way it has transformed itself during the last 15-20 years," French told PTI during the recent Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival here.<br /><br />'India: A Portrait' begins with an account of how the Indian union was conceived and put together.<br /><br />Focusing on the most recent changes, he gives a compelling narrative of the social and economic revolutions that are transforming India in fundamental ways.<br /><br />On why he has chosen to focus more on India's economic revolution in the book, the 45-year-old award-winning writer and historian said that he feels that the country is now being driven by economy rather than political movements. <br /><br />"I think politics is less important to India today than what it used to be in the fifties and the sixties. It is the economic change which is driving both social and cultural changes in the country," he observed.<br /><br />In the book, French has drawn revealing portraits of Jawaharlal Nehru, Dr B R Ambedkar, Indira and Sonia Gandhi, Mayawati, L K Advani and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.<br />Married to an Indian woman, the British author has been fascinated with India ever since he was a young boy in England.<br /><br />His first book on India, 'Liberty or death' had attracted its share of controversy for its unconventional portraits of Mahatma Gandhi and Md Ali Jinnah.<br /><br />In 2008, he got many accolades for the authorised biography of Nobel laureate V S Naipaul, 'The World Is What It Is'.<br /><br />"India particularly is an interesting country. It has more variety than in any other country that I have been to. Whether it is the people who live together with different religions, speaking languages different from each other, living in places which are geographically so different from each other," he said.<br /><br />Having travelled widely across India, French has also recorded conversations with Maoist revolutionaries, mafia dons, chained quarry workers, technological innovators, cash-rich pimps and self-made billionaire entrepreneurs in the book.</p>
<p>'India: A Portrait', which was released recently, describes how India evolved into a prominent nation of enormous promise and achievement despite having great contradictions and conflicts in the post-Independence era.<br /><br />The author's first book 'Liberty or Death: India's Journey to Independence and Division', published in 1997, offered a radical reinterpretation of the events surrounding India's independence and partition.<br /><br />The first book, French said, was essentially about how and why the freedom struggle developed the way it did and why it ended with the political settlement.<br /><br />"But the new book is about what India is at this moment and the way it has transformed itself during the last 15-20 years," French told PTI during the recent Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival here.<br /><br />'India: A Portrait' begins with an account of how the Indian union was conceived and put together.<br /><br />Focusing on the most recent changes, he gives a compelling narrative of the social and economic revolutions that are transforming India in fundamental ways.<br /><br />On why he has chosen to focus more on India's economic revolution in the book, the 45-year-old award-winning writer and historian said that he feels that the country is now being driven by economy rather than political movements. <br /><br />"I think politics is less important to India today than what it used to be in the fifties and the sixties. It is the economic change which is driving both social and cultural changes in the country," he observed.<br /><br />In the book, French has drawn revealing portraits of Jawaharlal Nehru, Dr B R Ambedkar, Indira and Sonia Gandhi, Mayawati, L K Advani and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.<br />Married to an Indian woman, the British author has been fascinated with India ever since he was a young boy in England.<br /><br />His first book on India, 'Liberty or death' had attracted its share of controversy for its unconventional portraits of Mahatma Gandhi and Md Ali Jinnah.<br /><br />In 2008, he got many accolades for the authorised biography of Nobel laureate V S Naipaul, 'The World Is What It Is'.<br /><br />"India particularly is an interesting country. It has more variety than in any other country that I have been to. Whether it is the people who live together with different religions, speaking languages different from each other, living in places which are geographically so different from each other," he said.<br /><br />Having travelled widely across India, French has also recorded conversations with Maoist revolutionaries, mafia dons, chained quarry workers, technological innovators, cash-rich pimps and self-made billionaire entrepreneurs in the book.</p>