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Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Making history enjoyable

Staff Reporter

Authors Diana, Michael Preston launch their second book

British authors say they were inspired by the Taj Mahal and Moghul architecture
Travel extensively in Central Asia, depend heavily on Baburnama for first volume

Hyderabad: Historical fiction may not go down well with historians, particularly when the writer's imagination revolves around characters that really existed rather than fictitious ones who are squeezed into literary works.

Nevertheless, pure history has rarely been popular compared to its fictional narrative, due to the latter's appeal to the emotive core of ordinary readers.

This probably is the reason behind the success of ‘Empire of the Moghul: Raiders from the North', the first in a series of five books contemplated by author Alex Rutherford. The book sold 15,500 copies within a year of its release.

The author, or rather authors of the series, Diana and Michael Preston, were here on Wednesday to launch their second book in the series ‘Empire of the Moghul: Brothers at War' and also to share facts about their nom-de-plume. Alex Rutherford, because the first half is gender-neutral and the latter half harks back to his own Scottish origins, Mr.Preston said, answering a reader's question about the pseudonym.

Read out passages

The Preston couple interacted with a select group of people and read out passages from their works on Wednesday.

Typical of their colonial compatriots, the British authors were inspired by the Taj Mahal and Moghul architecture.

“Though we started off studying 17 {+t} {+h} century India, we went back and back in history and found a fascinating epic there…”, said Ms.Preston.

“Seeing India, seeing the Taj Mahal and studying the architecture, and (wondering) how the fusion between styles came about, what could be the human element behind it fascinated us,” she said.

The couple travelled extensively in Central Asia, motherland of Babur, looking for architecture, landscape, flora and fauna, and “to see how it felt to be there.”

For the first volume, they depended extensively on ‘Baburnama', the autobiographical memoirs of the founder of the great Moghul empire, though ample liberty was exercised in fictionalising it.

Key character

The three-line mention of Baburi, an urchin, in Baburnama, for example, threw the couple into a spiral of imagination that has seen the boy carved into a central character and alter-ego of the emperor.

The latest book talks about the post-Baburian legacy and about intrigues and treacherous plots by the half-brothers of Humayun against him. Priced at Rs.495, the hard-bound edition is published by Hachette India and marketed by Akshara.

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