Inhaling the Mahatma

'When a Gandhi dies, nobody is safe.'

An assassination and a romance. A hijacking, several nuclear explosions and a religious experience ... just some of the ingredients in the latest tour de force from the best-selling author of The Carpet Wars .

In the searing summer of 2004, Christopher Kremmer returns to India, a country in the grip of enormous and sometimes violent change. As a young reporter in the 1990s, he first encountered this ancient and complex civilisation. Now, embarking on a yatra, or pilgrimage, he travels the dangerous frontier where religion and politics face off. Tracking down the players in a decisive decade, he takes us inside the enigmatic Gandhi dynasty, and introduces an operatic cast of political Brahmins, 'cyber coolies', low-caste messiahs and wrestling priests.

A sprawling portrait of India at the crossroads, Inhaling the Mahatma is also an intensely personal story about coming to terms with a dazzlingly different culture, as the author's fate is entwined with a cosmopolitan Hindu family of Old Delhi, and a guru who might just change his life.

About the Author

Christopher Kremmer is one of Australia's most respected and popular writers of narrative non-fiction, whose work has been compared favourably with that of V.S Naipaul and William Dalrymple. Educated at the University of Canberra , he spent a decade in Asia working as a foreign correspondent, producing a series of award-winning bestsellers, including The Carpet Wars , Bamboo Palace and his latest book, Inhaling the Mahatma , a personal history of India. Born in Sydney he divides his time between homes in India and Australia's Southern Highlands.