RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewAlthough the story that Dalrymple tells has long been the stuff of college classrooms, his great achievement is in assembling the disparate fragments of early India’s engagements across the continent into a delightfully readable whole ... He is at his best when he takes us along in person ... Like any unofficial guide, Dalrymple prefers to tell the most colorful and charming version of the story, generally sweeping away the reservations and ambiguities of modern scholarship to his endnotes.
Nandini Das
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewDas... is the rare scholar who combines a sensitivity to the literature of Jacobean England with a sympathetic and nuanced understanding of the Mughal empire ... In locating Roe within his English context... Das successfully rescues him from the stilted role of the progenitor of colonial rule and reveals something more interesting: an ambassador too honorable and too inexperienced to achieve anything much for either himself or his country ... She remains admirably evenhanded in her appraisal, revealing the subtle change of views and blurring of boundaries in this unpropitious moment of intercultural contact.
