Written in prison

Jawaharlal Nehru wrote this book while imprisoned by the British in Ahmednagar Fort, after the Quit India movement of 1942. Cut off from libraries, he relied on memory and the few books he could get.

It is part history and part personal reflection. Nehru asks what India is, and what has held such a varied land and people together for thousands of years. He also writes movingly about his late wife, Kamala, who died in 1936.