Englishman's Cameo , by Madhulika Liddle: A Review

Book Review Published in The New Indian Express

The focus is certainly on Mughal India, at Hachette, as hot on the heels of Raiders from the North, a fictionalised life of Babur, comes, The Englishman’s Cameo, by Madhulika Liddle. This is a murder mystery set in Shah Jahan’s Delhi. It is different from the former, in that it deals predominantly with the society of those times and very little with the famous emperors and warriors whom we often read about. The mughal period always allows room for descriptions of pomp and splendour and while the author does make use of this, the focus remains all the time on the lives, and deaths, of the main characters.
Muzzafar Jang, a young aristocrat and a nonconformist, is pulled into the investigation of the murder of a nobleman, Murad Begh, just to help his friend, Faisal, a jeweler’s apprentice, who has been implicated in the crime wrongly. Jang is in the privileged position of having friends in all strata of the society, and he uses this to advantage in cutting through the complicated webs to find out the criminal. This is a hazardous journey that even endangers his life.
The story holds some very interesting characters such as the extraordinarily beautiful courtesan, Mehtab; the ageing romeo, Akram, and his girl, Gulnar who become Jang’s co-conspirators in unravelling the knot; the sphinx-like inscrutable Nusrat; The clever Kotwal, Khan Sahib; Yusuf Hasan, his strongman; and lastly, the Englishman of the Cameo, who shall not be named here, for fear of spoiling the story for readers…
The author has a gift of conjuring up strong images, as for example, in the passage, ‘the tehkhana… was where many families retreated during the long, hot days…’ holds a description of architecture that subtly describes the people’s ways of coping with the vagaries of the weather.
To cite another instance of such a conversation:
‘… Not a bad man but he didn’t take to my pets, so I ended up not liking Turki at all.”

“Your pets?”
“I was nine at the time,” Muzaffar replied…”I’d built up quite a little collection of creatures, and most of them lived in cane baskets, or – during the day – on my shoulder.”’
This is an exchange that reveals how different Jang was from the conformist courtiers and nobles. While having an army of pets would be pretty normal behaviour to many present-day readers, the surprise in the voice of Akram, to whom Jang makes the confession, underlines the norms of that day and time. This is just one of the many occasions that allow one to notice and comment how ably the author brings out the background of space and time without actually describing it in so many words.
The novel could have used some tempo, however, and the story flags in places. Pages keep turning at a languid pace and nothing seems to be happening. Partly one is kept engaged by the descriptions, but perhaps something could have been added to speed up the flow. This is especially jarring because it happens more than once that when Jang is about to reach a clue, the corresponding character, who holds the answer gets murdered. One of these features – the languid pace, or the tantalising disappearances – could have been done away with. In fact, towards the very end, the book suddenly picks up speed and races to close, this could have been built into the story right from the middle part. Also, some stereotypes could have been avoided, as for example, the passages describing the Englishman with his ‘typically’ English humour.
The book, with its references to places in and around Dilli, may well bring on a wave of nostalgia in Delhi-ites. Whether it is the burning corpses in the ghats by the Yamuna or the crowded markets or the dusty winters that the author describes, she really does make suitable emotions ring in the reader’s mind. Madhulika Liddle has made a great start and one hopes she will continue to write more adventures for Muzzaffar Jang to live on.








Madhulika Liddle’s first novel, The Englishman’s Cameo, was released in Chennai on 13 October 2009. This is her first long work of fiction, but it’s far from being her first published work. Madhulika discovered her propensity for storytelling at age six, when she would entertain her family by telling stories. Even so she had to go through the route of working in the hospitality sector, advertising, and instruction design, before she would commit herself full time to writing fiction. Yet, despite holding jobs elsewhere, she has written many stories that went on to win international acclaim.
Her story, A Morning Swim, won the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association’s Prize (2003); A collection of five of her stories won the Oxfordbookstore e-Author, Ver. 4.0 competition (2006).
About her writing, she says, ‘The first of my stories to get published was a thriller-horror story about a haunted office, back in 2001. Since then I have written short stories in a variety of genre – humour; social drama; crime; and romance. Nearly all of these have one thing in common – a surprise ending! I write on two other passions: travel and classic cinema – Travelogues for Lounge (of Mint) and the international travel website www.igougo.com; About Old Cinema in the blog www.dustedoff.wordpress.com.

DS. You mentioned that you were interested in writing a mystery novel with a historical slant and later decided to set it in Mughal India. Did this have to do with the publisher's interest in that period in history? (Hachette has been publishing other books in that line recently.)
ML: Actually, the decision to set the story in Mughal India came right on the heels of the decision to write a mystery novel – mainly because I'm so fascinated by Mughal history. Hachette didn't have anything to do with it, since the book was begun almost five years back, when Hachette India didn't even exist.

DS. Did they provide you with resources that helped in your research of history?
ML. No – none. All the resources I used are either from books I own (or have borrowed), or in some cases, online resources such as digital libraries, museum collections and university sites.

DS. Are you a birdwatcher? What prompted the very specific references to birds in your novel?
ML. Yes, I am a birdwatcher. Very amateur, but I like to think I know more about birds than the average Dilliwallah! Since Muzaffar, in some ways, is a little like me (he likes reading, has a short temper, and so on) I decided to give him another trait that I possess: the love for birds – therefore the very specific references to birds.

Madhulika is already working on a set of short stories, which she may publish with Hachette. She says, ‘Muzaffar Jang was actually born in an earlier story of mine Murk of Art, which was published in the anthology, “21 under 40,” brought out by Zubaan. She believes that Muzaffar Jang, the main character in The Englishman’s Cameo has emerged into quite a character and will probably continue his detective work in novels to come.